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Monitor Your Website


Choosing a website hosting company process
Website hosting parameters
Free Website Hosting
Monitoring your website hosting
Conclusion

You have purchased a website hosting package!
Now it is time to do some monitoring.
How can you check the quality of the package you have purchased?
How can you be sure the website hosting company is living up to expected standards?

Two Different Types of Monitoring:

Initial monitoring – during the trial period
General monitoring – also after trial period ends

Website Hosting Quality Parameters:

1.    Support
2.    Uptime of the site and related services (email, databases, FTP, etc.)
3.    Site load speed from different places

Test Support:

The following steps are for the first month of hosting only. After that period, use support only when you need it.
1.    Call support a couple of times during the first month during work hours. Ask questions about things that aren't clear.
2.    Try calling once late in the day. Make sure someone answers.
3.    If there is a chat on the site, try it. Ask questions.
4.    Use the email system.
Get an impression of how they treat customers and how professional their response is.

Uptime and Load Speed Testing and Monitoring:

Monitoring the load speed and the site's Uptime needs to also be done after the first trial period is over.
If you find the uptime and load speed has significantly changed after the first month, you should consider moving your website.
There are two options for checking the availability and load speed of your site:

Installing a Testing Program

If you are a company or an internet user whose computer is always connected to the internet and runs most hours of the day, you should consider using a software installed on your computer. When performing a test of the load speed, you need to take into consideration from where you are testing. Congestion on your communication lines from your computer can cause poor test results without this being the hosting company's fault. However, you will get a general picture of the situation.
There are programs that send a ping to the hosting server and there are programs that test the site text to make sure the site really does load.
Nice free software's are: SiteUp – checks the site text but doesn't list the load speed. FreePing – for checking availability but also displays information about the server's response time.
An excellent but not free program is HostMonitor. This program offers many useful options and tests. If your internet site is crucial to your business, consider buying a copy of this program.

Using Services Provided by Websites Offering Site Monitoring

There are a number of companies that offer a service of checking your website every so often. These companies offer a good all-day monitoring solution without the results being affected by your company's network performance. You can open a trial account to monitor your website during the first month. For businesses whose website is crucial, I recommend purchasing such a monitoring program.
A professional and well-known company is Alertra but their service is a little expensive. Another good company is TraceRT which allows you to perform a number of tests from different places around the world. Finally, the cheapest company I found is Page Pinger, offering a decent service for an excellent price.

Comments Regarding Availability:

1.    Every company must perform server maintenance. Maintenance may involve a time when the server is down. It is acceptable for the hosting company to notify its customers by email before performing maintenance and to perform the maintenance during hours when there almost isn't any traffic on the server.
2.    Serious internet servers are very reliable but, like all technological systems, sometimes there are problems. The quality of a hosting company can be seen in the amount of time it takes to solve a problem. Problems that happen again and again are sign of trouble.

Continue to Conclusion



Relevant links

SiteUp - Free testing software to validate your site is up.
FreePing - Free software that ping the server every ammount of time.
HostMonitor - Professional monitoring software.
Alertra - Suggest professional service of site monitoring.
TraceRt - Website uptime and performance test from many location.
Page Pinger - Cheapest uptime monitoring out there.






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