7 Website Checks to Ensure Reliable Service

Most people only understand http ping checks by Web site monitoring. Monitis premium website monitoring provide options for deeper and comprehensive checks. In case of running business critical website, it is important to apply these checks in order to reduce downtime, increase web traffic and search engine ranking. Here is a short checklist:

1. Add ping test to your Server
2. Add Http tests to Home Page.
3. Add HTTP checks to other critical pages especially with dynamic Content. Especially important to add URL checks for password protected pages. Advanced Monitis HTTP/HTTPS checks allow to check also password protected pages and form submit reply pages (e.g. using POST). So for example if it is web mail, rather than just check home page, site owner may create a demo user and check page validity after login.
4. Add ping tests to firewall, router and other nodes between your website and public network. That way you can quickly find the issues. In case if your router disconnected then there is no need to check website. You can find intermediate node IPs via for example traceroute. You can check your network devices using ping or telnet protocols. Some devices also will provide HTTP interface so you can check also via HTTP.
5. Add DNS checks for your domain. In same cases your website could be completely reachable although your lose visitors because of issues on the name server.
6. If you have access to your web server then download and install internal Monitis agent (Linux or Windows) and add CPU, Memory and HDD checks. You can also add checks for Web server, and Database process. In that case you can see your server bottlenecks and fix them even before your website goes down. You can also add http checks within your firewall in case of web services which are not visible from outside.
   
7. If you have Database you can add external Database checks. Just make sire you enables access from our monitoring IPs.

Merging of Web Analytics and External Monitoring

Good blog post A view of the web analytics market. In the author words:

My take is also that monitoring will eventually be much closer to web analytics ... and end-to-end monitoring of the user experience will play a bigger role. It's obvious that a degraded web performance or poorly performing enterprise systems have a direct impact on conversion and outcomes on the frontline. Unless I'm mistaken, this is not measured by any of the ASP-based solutions.

That is actually what Monitis website performance monitoring service is providing. Having traffic and response time charts helps to notice a degraded web performance correlation with web load.

5 Monitors for Ultimate Business Performance (part 1)

1. Availability (a.k.a. Uptime, Response Time, External, User Experience) Monitoring – continuously checks web sites and services availability. By simulating user behavior from geographically dispersed monitors measure page load time which directly related with user experience. Monitors also notify about outages and calculate uptime statistics for SLA (service level agreement) management.

It helps to improve online sells, customer satisfaction, and decrease web revenue loses.

Who should use it: IT, business managers, webmasters, Internet marketing, sells, web developers and PR staff.

Usage examples: control SLA of thirds party providers (e.g. ISP, hosting, blog providers), control own website SLA, IT operations monitoring and troubleshooting, SLA reporting, switching-off PPC (pay-per-click) campaigns at downtime (e.g. Adwords), setting and controlling uptime goals by product business owners, understanding of online sells trends, collaborate performance management applications, understanding of load issues.