Have you ever found your blog or website has been suffering from outages? Probably, if your loyal readers or visitors found they can't browse your site as they used to be, they might let you know right away. That's very nice of them. C'mon! You really can't depend on them to report back everytime it occurs. What if someone found your site having some sort of outages and left unsaid? May be, they won't come back again.
Ugh... Outages?!
Outages might not stop you from blogging or managing your website, but it doesn't mean your visitors will ignore it too. Do you think following message alone can save you?
We deeply regret any inconvenience this may cause you. We value the trust of our visitors and are working aggressively to prevent these types of events from occurring in the future.
As a source residing online, you always need to make sure your site is reliable enough and not pushing difficulties right on your visitors' face. Remember, if your visitors can't find your site reliable enough, they can find a reliable competitor within few minutes. Think of how many readers and customers you can lose in few seconds. You can't afford to lose them over a technical issue. Can you?
If your site or hosting service tend to bother your visitors with technical or such issues time to time, then you really need to think about getting issues fixed, or switching to a reputed and reliable domain / hosting service before you find you have no loyal readers and visitors left anymore.
If your site or hosting service tend to bother your visitors with technical or such issues time to time, then you really need to think about getting issues fixed, or switching to a reputed and reliable domain / hosting service before you find you have no loyal readers and visitors left anymore.
Solutions!
What might be the solution to find if your site has been suffering from outages?
1. You can rely on your visitors to let you know about outages as they find
2. You can keep refreshing your site time to time looking for any visible issues
3. You can use a tool or service to monitor your site for outages
Now be honest and let me know what's your best option. Alright... I can see you staring at 3rd option ;) Didn't you? Indeed, it's my choice too.
Tools / services come in handy when you can't spend too much time on something. If it can monitor your blog or website for outages, then you don't need to rely on anyone else and you will always know what's happening on your site while you were away too. Isn't it sound wonderful?
The most important advantage of monitoring is that you can make decisions with confidence. Even if someone let you know about outages, you might not get to know about all the occurrences. But if a tool or service can display enough evidences, you will know what's your next move should be.
The most important advantage of monitoring is that you can make decisions with confidence. Even if someone let you know about outages, you might not get to know about all the occurrences. But if a tool or service can display enough evidences, you will know what's your next move should be.
But the real question is, what tool gonna help you with that. Did you know of any tool that can make use of? If you didn't, let me share what I've found and been using lately.
Pingdom Website Monitor
Pingdom offers a free website monitoring service for everyone to learn about outages happening on their sites. You can simply set up your blog or website, and leave monitoring upto this service.
You can either come back and check for outages at your convenience, or simply get notified about outages. That's the best feature I like about this service. You can get notifications via email and Twitter. Don't you think it's convenient enough? :)
Further, you can get notifications via SMS too. But you need to have SMS credits left in order to receive notifications. Anyway, you will get 20 SMS credits to spend when you get started.
In addition to monitoring service, Pingdom offers you the Real User Monitoring service too. If you would like to set it up, you can learn about your site's performance through the real-time data collected by Pingdom service.
You can either come back and check for outages at your convenience, or simply get notified about outages. That's the best feature I like about this service. You can get notifications via email and Twitter. Don't you think it's convenient enough? :)
Further, you can get notifications via SMS too. But you need to have SMS credits left in order to receive notifications. Anyway, you will get 20 SMS credits to spend when you get started.
In addition to monitoring service, Pingdom offers you the Real User Monitoring service too. If you would like to set it up, you can learn about your site's performance through the real-time data collected by Pingdom service.
Free solutions tend to have limitations at some points. It's valid for Pingdom Website Monitor too. With the free account, you can monitor only one site along with one contact to manage and get notifications about outages. But, if you are very pleased with your first experience, you can purchase another solution with extra features to monitor multiple sites while having more contacts to get notified.
Shall we start monitoring your blog or website now?
Steps:
1. Go to Pingdom Free Account Sign Up page.
2. Enter your email address and a new password for your Pingdom account, and click Free signup button.
3. Now you will be requested to complete your account details. Fill them, including your Time Zone.
4. In last step, you can set up website monitoring. Enter your blog / website address, set monitoring interval and further, you can get notifications by enabling alerts option too.
More Information:
* Navigate to Dashboard to find out if any outages occurred during last 24 hours. You can view response time of your site along with uptime too.
* You can edit your profile at Contacts and set how you need to get notified when issues occurred.
* You can learn about your site's outages and performance by accessing the detailed reports offered. Go to Reports section and explore the available reports and logs.
* To enable Real User Monitoring, navigate to RUM section and add your site. To track performance data of your site, you will need to place a script provided by Pingdom when adding your site.
* If you always used to stare at your smartphone, don't worry! Grab Pingdom app (Android / iOS) and check your site status on the go. You will get in-app notifications when something goes wrong too.
* Love more goodies? Head over to Apps and Downloads to explore more helpful apps, bookmarklets and plugins.
Enjoy :-)
* You can learn about your site's outages and performance by accessing the detailed reports offered. Go to Reports section and explore the available reports and logs.
* To enable Real User Monitoring, navigate to RUM section and add your site. To track performance data of your site, you will need to place a script provided by Pingdom when adding your site.
* If you always used to stare at your smartphone, don't worry! Grab Pingdom app (Android / iOS) and check your site status on the go. You will get in-app notifications when something goes wrong too.
* Love more goodies? Head over to Apps and Downloads to explore more helpful apps, bookmarklets and plugins.
Enjoy :-)
Hi Mayura,
I didn't know about this tool at all. You're right, it's our responsibility to make sure that our site is available to your readers when they come, because if they can't find us they can always find one of our competitors.
As always, thank you for this great tutorial and I'll will look into it.
Hi Sylviane,
You are right there dear :) It's indeed our responsibility to maintain the user experience on our site, else the loss will accounted for us not to someone else. Owh Yeah! Competitors are looking for opportunities ;)
I hope you will love to make use of this service to find reliability of your blog too dear :)
Thanks for coming over and contributing your thoughts on this topic Sylviane :)
Cheers...
Hi Mayura,
Yay! I knew this one too :)
Yes indeed, Pingdom does help a great deal, especially when our site is down or going through outages. It does happen at times that the hosting services or due to other reasons, like too much of traffic etc. our sites becomes slow or it starts to show an error message of not being available for a while. I'm glad we have services like Pingdom that let us know about it and tell us the down or up time too.
I won't take the credit for knowing about this tool completely because I'd read about it and send the link to my hubby to check it out. All tech things are sent to him to see, whether we should use them or not, and we did. :)
Thanks for sharing all the information and the steps about Pingdom. I think those who aren't using, must start with it. Have a nice week ahead. :)
BTW - Thank YOU for putting up the 30 Top Men Bloggers of Aha!NOW banner on the right - looks wonderful :)
Hi Mayura,
We are responsible to make sure our readers to find us properly. Plus it is available to them when they visit us. I haven't heard about this tool, but it sure looks good to me.
Once again a fantastic tutorial my friend! Will check this one out!
-Donna
Hi Harleena,
Ha ha... Now you gotta admit you are not a techphobie at all :D You just love it! Anyway, I'm really glad your hubby does take care of your blog as well. You got the perfect partner like Donna mentioned about hers in a recent post ;)
Exactly! The outages and performance issues can occur due to many reasons and you already mentioned some which I didn't mention up there Harleena :)
When it comes to platforms like WordPress which we given access to core elements like database and files, we definitely need to watch out for outages as our actions can bother reliability too. I'm glad you already knew it and been using it.
Seems no issues with it, as you have been using it for long enough than I did. Anyway, you can enjoy the mobile app now too dear :)
it's indeed an honor to be featured and I'm proud to have it embedded here Harleena ;) I'll have it until the end of this year. Glad the banner could fit into sidebar. Thanks again for honoring us!
Thanks for coming over, and adding your thoughts and personal experiences about Pingdom Website Monitor Harleena :)
You have a joyous week there too dear :)
Cheers...
Hi Donna,
Definitely! If it's not we who make the effort to keep things steady and deliver best user experience for our users, who else will? :) We should be the first to know if any outages happen on our site and now it made easy.
I hope you will find it useful to monitor your blog and you can do it on the go too Donna ;) Being mobile-friendly have advantages.
Thanks for coming by and sharing your thoughts on this topic Donna :)
Cheers...
Hi Mayura - I'd never heard of this and I've been and set it up straight away - I've often wondered about my site going down when I'm not aware of it, because Hostgator have had a few glitches recently that have affected me. I've set up the RUM thing but don't know where to put the code - can you explain in very simple terms in which file and exactly where it needs to go?
Thanks for a great share, Mayura - and for the lovely clear screenshots, which were very easy to follow.
Thanks for the post, Mayura :)
I remember deleting my 'check' a few months back. I kept on getting alerts for my old blog. I thought I had deleted all the things associated with my old blog.
In a way I am glad that happened, I had forgotten all about this tool. I had planned to install this on my new blog (but, I forgot that too! I really need to write these things down).
I have set it up for the new blog.
So, I do appreciate the post. Hope you had a wonderful weekend!
Hi Sue,
Taking action! ;) So you have it set up already, and can keep on checking the status of your hosting service. Decision making made easier, eh?
The script should goes into header.php, in between and tags, Sue. You can easily spot 'em. If your theme offers a separate section to add header scripts, you can easily add this script there instead of editing core files :)
I hope it's clear enough dear :) Unless, of course, let me know and I'll help setting it up for you.
Thanks for coming by and sharing your views on this topic Sue :) I'm really glad to hear it's easy enough to follow too.
Cheers...
Hi Jeevan,
Oops... The alerts were getting for an expired domain or hosting service? Seems it keep on checking while it's inactive.
I'm glad to hear you were using it before. Always nice to get feedback from experience. I guess now this post came as sort of a reminder for you Jeevan :) You can set it up for your upcoming blog and monitor any outages.
I hope you had it listed in your to-do list before you erase the memory about Pingdom mate ;)
Thanks for coming over and sharing your views on this topic Jeevan!
You have a successful week over there!
Cheers...
Have you ever used any other tools except Pingdom? What about the solution Anturis (http://www.anturis.com)?
Hi Mayura,
I found you on Adrienne's blog. That post about breaking hearts.... It is something else. I see that user experience is at the centre of your message.
It is great if we can all place our users needs first. The pingdom tool will really make work easier. I also think that it is important to always add manual checks with what we assign to our tools.
Thanks for sharing this great piece.
Eyram
Hi Mayura,
Many thanks. I've found the header.php file but don't know what you mean by "in between and tags" - see, I'm not such a techie after all, because I can't easily spot 'em at all (because I don't know what I'm looking for!) Can you show me exactly what I need to be looking for in the code - I'd like to do it myself if I can, so that I understand it.
Sorry for being a pest, Mayura ;)
Yup.
Yes, indeed. And, I am thankful for that reminder ;) Or else, I certainly would have forgotten to set it up.
No mention :) Thanks, you too!
I thought that Pingdom took away their free options Mayura. I've used it in the past but then read a few different places that they were only going with the premium version. I signed up with them in the past but that was after I'd changed hosting services so I haven't had near the issues with this one than I did my other one.
Thanks for sharing this though and now I'm curious to go and find out myself.
Hey, hope you're doing okay this week and not completely worn out yet. ;-)
~Adrienne
Hi Mayura; I signed up for this some time ago and it is very good at letting you know when your site is down and also when it comes back up. Fortunately, it's not too often! I wasn't aware of the RUM feature though; thanks for pointing that one out and for offering such comprehensive tutorials. Cheers!
Okay; so here's where I run into trouble.
And we're off, congratulations! Please paste the code between the and tag on your site to start collecting data.
This is going to sound really stupid, but I have no idea where to find this. I will try to find out for myself, but if you happen to see this, any insight would be appreciated. Thanks!
Ha ha... Don't be Sue :) That might help someone else too. Really glad you gonna do it by yourself, brave girl!
Ah, you nearly did it then. Now you just need to find head tags and insert the script anywhere in between them. In between those tags mean, anything goes in belongs to head section.
Hope the attached image make it more clear for you :)
Any questions? Fire away!
Most welcome mate :) I'm really glad about that.
Have fun there Jeevan :)
Cheers...
Hi Eyram,
LOL :D Thanks for the feedback mate. It's nice of you to say!
I really appreciate taking the extra mile from Adrienne's blog too mate :) Ha ha... The title was curious! Thanks for the comment back there too.
Exactly! If we care users' convenience, they won't hesitate to hang around at all. Agree, manual checks do count in between the automated check ups. As Pingdom take care of it in short intervals, I think rest is assured :)
Thanks for coming over and sharing your thoughts on this topic Eyram :)
Have a fabulous week there!
Cheers...
Hi Adrienne,
Ah... It's nice to know! I wasn't an old user of Pingdom though dear :) Then, it's wonderful to hear they got free option back with some goodies. Very satisfied so far.
I know you have been through difficulties with so-called top hosting services and now you are on right track with a friend recommendation :) So no worries as I heard they are excellent in support too. Yet, you can set this up and be on top of everything. It won't hurt at all. Isn't it?
lol :D Not worn out, not yet friend! Lot of things going on over here, and enjoying the fabulous experience being on your blog as a guest blogger too Adrienne :)
Thanks for coming by and sharing your views and experiences with outages and Pingdom dear :)
You have a lovely week there!
Cheers...
Hi Debbie,
I'm glad to hear you signed up with Pingdom earlier and seems you had no issues with it after all :) Always nice to hear from most experienced users.
Real User Monitoring will come in handy for you, to get to know more about your visitors Debbie. Insights can always helpful in decision making.
Thanks for coming over and sharing your thoughts and experience with Pigdom dear :)
You have an awesome week there!
Cheers...
Oops... You and Susan in the same boat Debbie :)
Can you please refer to the reply I made to Susan? Hope you can follow and insert the script without a problem.
Anyway, if you have questions or need assistance, let me know :)
Cheers...
You are a star, Mayura - thank you very much. I was confused because there's so much gobbledygook code between those two - so I could put the code, say, immediately after the first one, and that would be OK? And if so, would you put it straight after the closing > without a space, or on the next line?
Sorry, but you did say "any questions"!!
You're very welcome Sue :)
Of course, I asked for it :D lol... Yeah, you can add it immediately after opening head tag, and placing it just after the closing > will do, Sue :)
But, if you can add it on next line or with another line break in, I hope it will easy on you, when you need to find the exact script next time dear.
I hope I'm clear enough here. Else, shoot me! Oh no... Shoot a comment ;)
Ah... Thanks for letting me know that Debbie :)
I was worried about showing it as Guest and contacted the Disqus support. They said you might have deleted it.
Glad you got it working dear :) Hope you will love the insights!
Cheers...
That's perfect, Mayura - I've got it now - many thanks. No need to duck, I've put my gun away ;)
I haven't heard about this tool. I do have a hosting company that I am on my own dedicated server. Very expensive but I have a heavy site. I made the blog site part of the main site and is just another page, so I am happy to say outages are not a problem. If it does go down, it is back up in 15 minutes or less as it is been monitored as well. Yes all of this costs money, but I need a peace of mind.
Hey Sherman,
Exactly! :) Ah... You have been notifying about outages via email and that's very convenient. It seems your hosting provider knows what customers need :)
I know we have wonderful readers who loves our blogs and care what's going on Sherman :) But YES, we can't always expect them to be the ones to notify about issues and as long as we can be the first to notify, I believe readers would be even more satisfied about the experience on our blogs.
Well, I hope you have already had it set up as I'm late here to reply mate ;)
Thanks for coming over and contributing your thoughts and related experience Sherman :)
You have a lovely weekend mate!
Cheers...
Hi Arleen,
Indeed, dedicated servers are costy, but you are investing more on resources dear :) That depicts how much you are dedicated into your business, and of course, peace of mind to focus on what you need to. In the meantime, you are avoiding the need of such monitoring services too :)
So, I don't think you will ever need this cute little service to monitor yours :) Anyway, if you find anything odd with performance, now you know you can make use of this service to have a second opinion.
Thanks for coming by and sharing your thoughts on this topic Arleen :)
You have a wonderful weekend dear!
Cheers...
Hi Mayura,
Totally new tool to me, like Sylviane said. I like the idea of having an app notify you of your site being down. Hostmonster had been like gold to me; site outages are extremely rare and customer service is so quick to help with ETA's, etc, that my nerves are calmed immediately.
Thanks for sharing.
Hi Mayura, Great explanation of Pingdom. I've been using them for a while and find the service to be very helpful. I was having issues with my hosting company in September and Pingdom helped me identify when my site was down and when it came back up again.
How often do you suggest that Pingdom ping our blogs? I am pretty sure I have it set for 1 minute. Is that too frequently? What do you think?
Hi Ryan,
That'd make us the first to know about outages, eh? ;) I started loving it with the recent mobile app and of course, notifications are really a time saver too.
I'm glad to hear your hosting partner has been very reliable and caused no trouble for you and your readers :) Thankfully, you are being calm and keep blogging.
I hope you will have it set up for a second opinion mate :)
Thanks for coming over and contributing your thoughts and experience with hosting service Ryan :)
Merry Christmas and have a festive week there :)
Cheers...
Hi Carolyn,
Ha ha... Now you beat me like Harleena :D Well, I know you always up-to-date with technology though.
Oops... Fortunately you had it set up. Nice to hear Pingdom has been helpful for you dear :) I don't have much experience, neither got notifications so far. But found pretty useful as it report about uptime and response time.
I'm glad you asked the right question dear. 1 minute interval is much better, and it's not too frequent at all :) It's not like Googlebots crawling our sites, so pings itself don't cause any trouble even you have so many readers on your blog at the same time.
The next interval we can specify is 5 minutes, and as we are talking about blogs where readers can come and go in any minute, checking once every 300 seconds is not worthy. Isn't it? :)
I hope you will stick to 1 minute, Carolyn :) You already configured it to very best.
Thanks for coming over, and sharing your experience on using Pingdom dear :)
Happy Holidays and have a Very Merry Christmas Carolyn :)
Cheers...
Hi Mayura,
It's a great idea to actually monitor your site and have an idea once it goes off. Such an act, as you've rightly pointed out, prepares your site for being 'live' and giving you the singular honor of discovering its off the air first.
However, I don't use Pingdom. For sometime now, Free Website Monitoring has been a great tool. I get an alert immediately my blog goes on error or is no more accessible. A second message is again sent once it recovers. This second message has the total time the site stayed in error.
I'll try Pingdom someday. And maybe, I shall compare the two tools in a post on my blog.
Merry Christmas!
Always,
Terungwa
Hi Terungwa,
Indeed mate ;) As we do care most about our readers and the health of our blogs, monitoring is essential. Isn't it? No need to monitor ourselves, but it does notify when there's any outage ;)
Mmm... Seems like another wonderful alternative :) I have to try it out too. Thanks for mentioning that mate. I'm glad to hear it made you be on top of everything about uptime and down time of yours.
Of course, give Pingdom a try if you can, so you will find what'e best among them for you :)
Thanks for coming over and contributing your thoughts and the alternative you have been using Terungwa :)
Merry Christmas and enjoy the festive week mate!
Cheers...
Oops... Thanks for spotting the link mate :)
It's no longer available and no need to send such a request now. You just have to wait until Google detect your authorship markup and show 'em in search results.
Cheers...
Hello Mayura,
I had not heard of this tool, and it does seem a lot useful. Now that i have removed Wordfence, I think I should give this a try.
Nice review by the way. Have a good year ahead.
Hi Praveen,
Indeed mate :) Eventhough I didn't spot any issues so far, it has been helping my friends spotting reliability issues with their hosting partners. Plus, conflicts with plugins and services they have been using.
As it notifies about any issue, you don't wanna monitor all time ;) I hope you will have it set up for yours too and find how helpful it can be.
Thanks for coming over and sharing your thoughts on the topic Praveen :)
Wishin' you a very Happy New Year too :)
Cheers...
Thnx Bro :)
Your blog is superb.. If you can review and suggest something for my blog 'www.techntuts.com'...
Thnx bro :)
Your blog is superb.. If you could pls review and suggest sumthing for my technology blog 'www.techntuts.com' it would be very helpful.
Excellent timing for this post, yesterday my site was down... it was caused by hostgator and the other hosting companies under it's name...
I am registered to a few services like this, perhaps this one too... got instant notification... but the users of guest crew were quicker, they had already reported the problems and were quite mad that the site was down...
thanks,
Uttoran Sen,
Hi Uttoran,
Oops... Sorry to hear that mate! Yet, you got your site registered with a similar service and instant notifications is really a helpful feature. Isn't it? :)
You're indeed lucky to have such loyal readers to let you know about outages :) I agree, sometimes they spot the most overlooked and clueless issues.
Thanks for coming over, and sharing your thoughts and experience on this topic Uttoran :)
You have a Happy 2014! :)
Cheers...
I didn't know about pingdom tool before. it seems a great tool to monitor our website. I generally used pingdom to check site loading speed. But it has lots of feature.
Thanks fort share :)
Hi Ahsanul,
Ah... So you have been using Pingdom tools for reviewing performance :) Now, isn't that great you can check for outages too?
I hope you will give it a go and find how useful it can be mate. Loved it since I started to use it :)
Thanks for dropping by and sharing your thoughts about Pingdom Ahsanul :)
Have a lovely week mate!
Cheers...