Update testing made spookily easy with Ghost Inspector

Ghost Inspector is a tool that allows us to record a sequence of events along a user journey and then turn them into automated tests. We’ve been using it on build projects for years, but it’s particularly useful when we do security updates for the sites we host and support.

Every time we do a core or plugin update we need to perform the same sorts of tests over and over again on each site. So, automating this saves us a lot of time. The nature in which it’s recorded also allows us to go back and view what was tested – and the results – very precisely.

When we update modules this way, we’re notified if any of the essential site processes fail when the updates move along to our test environment. We already perform visual regression testing using Autopilot (for the Drupal and WordPress sites we host with Pantheon). That's great for picking out any visual errors on sites. Now Ghost Inspector is able to tell us, for example, if a test user failed to log in or post content successfully. It can perform functional tests automatically – just like that.

At the moment we’re using Ghost Inspector on a handful of sites but we’ll be rolling this out across many more over the coming months to help keep more sites even more safe and secure. 

We update our client sites regularly, as an out of date core, modules, or plugins, can cause significant problems with data security. Thanks to our Slack channel instant messenger integration, we’re notified automatically by our various software providers when critical updates are released. This means we know exactly what we need to update, and when. 

It’s our goal to make our update process as efficient and automated as we possibly can, so we can continue to provide a best in class support service for IE Digital's clients.