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.