Website Monitoring Blog

As a rule, commercial website monitoring services offer so many features and capabilities that an ordinary user may feel trapped in realm of buttons and unknown terms when trying to master website monitoring control panel. Monitoring usage may turn into a nightmare for an unexperienced webmaster. I fully understand that there are people who’d like to enjoy website monitoring services without having to read tons of technical literature and documents. That’s why I’ve prepared this short Guide. As an example I’ve chosen Dotcom-Monitor’s control panel.

Let’s see how to set up the most typical tasks.

I. HTTP Monitoring Usage (non-secure websites).

In most cases you will be asked to specify:

• Task Name: just type in something to identify the current task, i.e.: My Site Homepage;
• Maximum Connection Timeout (in seconds): how many seconds web monitoring server tries to connect to your website before it considers the connection failed and initializes downtime notification process;
• Request Type: Select either GET or POST;
• URL: the URL of the page to be watched, i.e.: http://www.mysite.com/mypage.html;
• Keywords: you provide certain words or phrases from the content of your web page, which web monitoring agents constantly scan the page for. If the agents fail to find the phrase, the page has probably hacked/defaced and the content has been replaced. (An agent is one of the servers of the web monitoring provider that simulates activity of a real user);

II. FTP Server Monitor:

• Task Name: nothing new here, just invent something self explanatory;
• Maximum Connection Timeout: don’t forget that timeout is usually counted in seconds;
• Server: your FTP server, i.e.: ftp://ftp.mysite.com;
• Username, Password: if you want monitoring agents to check the availability of files on your FTP server, provide your login and password;
• Get directory listing: if you select YES, the web monitoring agent will try to get the directory listing;
• Directory: if you specify the directory name here, the agent will switch to this directory just after it gets connected. I.e.: /files/;
• Check File: web monitoring agents will try to check the availability of the file, i.e. my-file.html;
• Download File: if you specify a filename, an attempt to download the file will be made. I.e.: my-file.html.

III. DNS Monitor Usage. If you want to be sure that your DNS server operates correctly all the time, you might want to set up DNS Server monitoring. In this case be ready to provide:

• Task Name: specify a name for the task, e.g.: My DNS Server Monitoring;
• Maximum Connection Timeout: the number of seconds that the monitoring agent (for the “monitoring agent” concept explanation see Part I of the article) is going to try to get the URL resolved before the attempt is considered a failure.
• Server: the name of the DNS server;
• URL to Resolve: the URL that is going to be resolved, e.g. http://www.mysite.com;

IV. UDP (User Data Protocol) monitoring:

• Task Name: specify a name for the task, e.g. UDP monitoring;
• Maximum Connection Timeout (in seconds): 60 is a usual value;
• Server: the server to be monitored, e.g. 122.88.21.11;
• Port: specify the port to use when monitoring agents will try to connect to your server;

V. POP3 (Incoming Mail Server) monitoring: website monitoring agents will try to login to your incoming mail server and get a correct response with a certain frequency.

• Task Name: specify a name for the task, e.g. POP Server Monitoring;
• Maximum Connection Timeout (in seconds): 60 is a usual value;
• Server: your POP3 server(incoming mail server), e.g. pop.somehost.com;
• Login to Server: select YES if you want the monitoring agent to login to your mail server. You will have to provide your e-mail account data for monitoring agents to log in. If you select NO, all the monitoring agent will be able to check is whether your server is up or not.
• User Name: a user name to log in to the POP server;
• Password: your e-mail password;

VI. SMTP (Outgoing Mail Server) monitor usage: website monitoring agents will connect to your SMTP Server and get a correct response with a certain frequency.

• Task Name: specify a name for the task, e.g. SMTP Server Monitoring;
• Maximum Connection Timeout (in seconds): 60 is a usual value;
• Server: SMTP server (your outgoing mail server), e.g. smtp.mysite.com;

VII. SMTP/POP3 (Incoming Mail Server and Outgoing Full Cycle) monitoring usage: website monitoring agents will try to send an e-mail and then receive it within a given period of time.

• Task Name: specify a name for the task, e.g. ‘SMTP/POP monitoring task’;
• Maximum Connection Timeout (in seconds): 60 is a usual value;
• SMTP Server: your SMTP server name, e.g. smtp.mysite.com;
• Email to send a test message: e.g. myemail@mysite.com
• POP3 Server: your POP3 server name, e.g. pop.mysite.com;
• POP3 User Name: your username to login to the POP server;
• POP3 Password: your POP3 password;
• Maximum timeout for test message receiving: 60 is a usual default.

These were the most typical tasks to set up in your website monitoring account. In my next guide I’m going to tell you how to deal with notification groups, how to set up phone alerts, and how not to be awaken at 3 a.m. when your website suddenly goes down

Good luck!

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