Website outages are never fun, but not knowing that your website is offline (and has been for several hours or even days), that’s worse! Monitoring websites can be done with tools, or just visually load it in your browser!
We’ve seen it all guys! From a blip in the matrix when Cloudflare went offline last week, to a client asking if we have a backup as the last time they were on their site was 3 months ago and the don’t know when it went down.
Today, we’re covering Website Monitoring Tools, not the health and fitness of your website, but rather “is the website online and functional?”
Follow along as we dig through a few items on our list, and provide some useful tools that we use on a regular basis to make sure our site (and client sites) are online and working.
Here Are Some Jump Points From The Video
00:00 Website offline is never fun, but we have solutions
01:40 The web crashed on Friday July 17th 2020
03:00 What Happened at Cloudflare? Why did it crash? Who was affected?
04:55 Conor had a heads up as his monitoring tools sent alerts (tools he used back in the web hosting days when he managed hundreds of servers)
06:00 Here are some tools you can monitor your site in real-time – down.com, downforeveryoneorjustme.com and isitdownrightnow.com
07:30 If your website goes off in the middle of the night, does anyone know? Here are some tools you can use: uptrends, uptime, pingdom, StatusCake, and UptimeRobot.com
08:50 UptimeRobot is what we use on our end. Love these guys!
09:30 Have it monitor for a specific word rather than just an active return.
10:20 When we provide tools/tips and suggestions, these are things we’ve tested and use
12:20 We had an alert last night for a site error – it was an automated update
14:27 Cloudflare rarely has issues, but they are very transparent in investigations
15:47 What other resources do we have on what to do once you find the site failed?
17:20 MakeABackup.com – Make a backup. This is your fallback position
18:30 Have a Disaster Recovery Plan – write down who your host is, passwords for login and same with webmaster contacts
Join Us Each Week For A New Facebook Live
Every week, Conor & Kimberly have a Facebook Live that is open to everyone. We usually have a topic pre-planned, but we’re always open to new discussions during the broadcast!
If you have a topic that you’d like us to cover, drop us a note and we’ll do our best to get it added to the schedule!