Viewing Scan Settings

Scan Settings can be set at both the Organization-level and the Project-level. The Scan Settings page provides many options to consider in determining what pages are included or excluded from a scan.

In the initial state of a Project or Organization, many of the items are blank on the Scan Settings page. (See: Editing Scan Settings for more detail on how to use each of these settings.)

File Types, URL Strings and Page Content

• Mime types to include: Mime types to include from the scan, includes checkboxes for HTML and PDF.
• Extensions to exclude: File extensions to exclude from the scan.
• URLs to exclude: Specific URLs to exclude from the scan. It is important to note that not only will the listed page be ignored by the scan, but all of the links on that page will be ignored as well.
• Must not have: Strings that will exclude the page from being scanned if the string appears in the URL or page content.
• Must have all: Strings that must ALL be present in the URL or page content in order for the page to be scanned.
• Must have any: Strings, any one of must be present in the URL or page content in order for the page to be scanned.

How to Identify Unique Pages

In many situations the page URL is unique for all pages, but there are situations where a URL can contain additional parameters which would make the page appear unique when it really isn't. The available options change according to which method is selected.

Option 1: Use URL to determine unique page

Use URL to determine unique page is the default setting. The spider will look at the entire URL and scan every page with a unique URL. This setting allows you to make additional choices to determine uniqueness.

• Discard all URL parameters when determining unique URLs: Checking this box will cause the scanner to ignore all of the parameters added to the end of the URL – such as things following "?".
• URL Parameters to use when determining unique URLs: You can ensure that certain parameters are considered by the scanner in determining unique URLs.
• URL Parameters to discard when determining unique URLs: A list of parameters to ignore when determining unique URLs.

Option 2: Use the page content to determine unique page:

• Use the built-in hash function: This will enable axe Monitor's built-in hash function to compare page content hashes to determine whether or not page content is unique. Pages with the same hash value would not be scanned again.
• JavaScript to produce content hash: A JavaScript function can be used to include areas (such as a content area) or exclude areas (such as a time stamp, date stamp, footer, header or navigation areas) of a page when determining if a page is unique.

General Settings

• Javascript to produce unique title: In cases where the URL of a page does not change even though the content of a page changes, this option allows you to add a unique identifier to the page URL for display in the Pages report.
• Set referrer to parent URL or to the one specified in "Referrer" field below: The "Referrer" is the page that sent you to the page you are now on. Sometimes, specifying a referrer is required for security purposes, and the scanning tool will need to include referrer information in the URLs it scans. Other times, the page content that displays may depend on the referrer page. After checking this box, an explicit URL can be specified in the Referrer field below.
• Referrer: An explicit URL - see above.
• Restrict scanned domains to: By default this field is set to "Domains defined in the domains list". The other options is: "Domains defined in the domains list or the same IP address". Allowing the "same IP address" has the effect of broadening the scan.
• Default pages: A list of pages that are considered default pages for a directory or virtual directory in the server such as "index.html" or "default.aspx". This is useful for preventing duplication of scanned pages.
• Maximum number of pages: The default value for this field is 1000.

Task Retry Settings

If a server is busy or becomes unresponsive, you can place limits on the amount of time axe Monitor will spend waiting for a task to complete before moving on.

• Elapsed time to wait before retrying or page load and scan timeout in each try (in seconds): The default value is 360 seconds.
• Task status polling interval (in milli seconds): The default value is 500 milliseconds.
• Number of retries per task: The default value is 3 tries. After 3 tries the scanner will quit trying to scan that page and will mark that page as a failure.
• Pause between retries (in seconds): The default value is 5 seconds.

Edit Scan Settings

To modify the Scan Settings, select the Edit button at the bottom of the page.