Silktide Quality Assurance Platform
Our quality assurance platform supports our content, SEO, readability and accessibility.
We use Silktide web governance platform to help us identify and fix problems across our web pages. Access to Silktide platform is open to all colleagues who manage or edit webpages at www.ncl.ac.uk.
What is Silktide?
Silktide helps us to find and fix website problems. It shows where problems occur on the page, and explains how to fix them. It improves content readability and accessibility, making our website more accessible for everyone.
Content
The content module identify's issues that can damage our credibility. It makes sure there are no broken links, typos, or grammatical errors. These errors can make it difficult for a user to understand our content and may even put users off.
Accessibility
Our websites should be accessible to all users. This includes people with disabilities, with old or unusual technology, and slow internet access. Silktide validates against WCAG 2.1 A, AA and AAA standards to help meet our legal obligations.
Marketing
The marketing module helps to gain more business online, by gaining more relevant visitors and converting those visitors more effectively. It tracks search rankings for our pages and that of our competitors. It monitors PPC advertising, backlinks, popularity, SERP and more.
User Experience
Find design, technical, and speed issues that can damage our reputation. Monitoring our sites on mobile, web vitals, images, uptime and functionality.
Getting started with Silktide
To get access to Silktide and the report for your website, log a self-service request at nuservice.ncl.ac.uk (University login required). We’ll create a Silktide login for you.
You’ll receive an email from Silktide with a login link. Here you can change your password and log in. We recommend bookmarking this link.
Silktide Academy training courses
When you first log in, click the Avatar in the top right corner of the interface to visit the Silktide Academy. Here you'll find videos and quizzes to teach you the fundamentals of using Silktide.
Complete the module ‘Introduction to Silktide’ and we'll give you access to your site report.
Have a question about Silktide?
Use the Quickstart Guide or chat with support on the Silktide Support site. This site has plenty of useful information to help you get the most out of Silktide.
If you can't find the answer in the support site, ask our editor community in the Silktide chat (University login required).
Training session recordings
Silktide delivered live training for our editor community covering aspects of Silktide platform. These sessions help bring the platform to life and supplement the modules available in the Silktide Training Academy.
We recommend putting aside some time to watch these 30 minute sessions. Watch the videos at the links below (University login required):
Introduction to Silktide Platform
Content accessibility workshop
Delivered by Jessica Chambers, Silktide Accessibility Specialist.
Jessica covers the key things you can improve on your website to make content more inclusive for your users. To show what accessibility means in practice, Jessica uses live examples from University web pages. This session covers:
- how to write accessible alt text for images
- the importance of descriptive link text
- accessible documents
- how to use Silktide accessibility simulator Chrome plug-in
Watch the session recording (50 minutes) (University login required)