Manage Site

Adding a Site

To add a site to your existing account, select Configuration → Sites in the Control Menu and click the Add a new site button in the Configuration: Sites screen. If your account has available monitoring credits, just select which available site plan to use and begin configuring the site. If there are no available monitoring credits then you will be prompted to purchase credits.

Site Name

Description of the monitored site. This can be a short URL but preferably should be a brief description of the site or server you are monitoring, for example, "Company Home Page."

Site Plan

Allows selection of the appropriate monitoring plan from those available in your AlertSite account.

Monitoring Type

AlertSite provides a number of strategies for customers to configure the circumstances that will cause an operational alert to occur.

Options:
• Primary: Alerts are issued from the primary location only when errors are detected from the primary and are verified not to be localized connectivity problems.
• Round Robin: Monitoring is performed sequentially and each location finishes its test before the next one starts. Alerts are issued when two locations detect an error within the same monitoring interval. Rotated locations are allowed.
• SLA (MultiPOP): An optional strategy using Error Correlation Technology and focuses on uptime by sending alerts only when two, three, or all of the monitoring locations detect an error simultaneously. Rotated locations are allowed.
• Global Notify: Alerts are issued from all locations for all errors. Rotated locations are allowed for Usage Based Monitoring accounts only.
• Global Verify: Alerts are issued from all locations as long as the errors detected are verified not to be localized connectivity issues. Rotated locations are allowed for Usage Based accounts only.

For more details, see Monitoring Types.

Rotate Locations?

When set to Yes, monitoring for each interval will rotate through the pool of locations configured for this device. The number of rotated locations is selected from the Locations per Interval dropdown that appears when set to Yes. Note that InSite locations cannot be rotated.

Locations per Interval

Number of locations to rotate through during each monitoring interval from the pool of locations configured for this device. There is no limit on rotation pool size or charge for adding locations to the pool. For Plan-based accounts, the rotation count is determined by the number of location credits.

URL

This is the preferred field for the URL or server name. It is perfectly acceptable to put short URLs in the Site Name field leaving the URL field blank, however, long URLs belong in the URL field as they might cause short alert message truncation and/or throw off the alignment of some reports.

Site Type

The site type determines the protocol and default ports AlertSite will use. It is very important to set this accurately. For example, to monitor an HTTPS page the "Secure Web Site" option must be selected in order for AlertSite to monitor your secure web server and perform the required SSL handshake.

Options (in alphabetical order):
• E-mail (IMAP) Server: Send out an E-mail message over IMAP
• E-mail (POP) Server: Send out an E-mail message over POP
• E-mail (SMTP) Server: Send out an E-mail message over SMTP
• FTP Server: Connect to an FTP Server (optionally login and upload a file)
• FTP over SSL (FTPS): Connect to an FTP Server over Secure Socket Layer (optionally login and upload a file)
• Name Server: Monitor a Domain Name Server by resolving a known domain
• Roundtrip E-mail (POP/SMTP): Send an email and retrieve it from the inbox (requires login and password)
• Secure Web Site: Connect to a secure website (HTTPS)
• Server/Device Ping: Ping a server
• Simple TCP Connect: Perform a 3-way TCP handshake with an open port listener on a server
• Web Site: Perform a GET command to a website (default for most Site Plans).

EMail Address

Used for Roundtrip E-mail devices. This is the address that the test email will be sent to. In order to avoid conflicts it is recommended that you use an email address that is not actively used by anyone in your company. If you use an address that is being shared, there is a possibility that the test mail may be picked up by someone else's mail client and the test will fail.

POP3 Server

Used for Roundtrip E-mail devices. The address of the POP3 server that the mail will be read from. We currently support alternate ports (default is 110) and SSL connections.

In order to use an alternate port, add a : followed by to the end of your host name. In order to use SSL connections, format your mail address with a leading pop3s://.

Example:

mail.somewhere.com - standard port 110 mail server. pop3s://mail.somewhere.com:995 - SSL based server on port 995.

SMTP Server

Used for Roundtrip E-mail* devices. This field is optional. If left blank, mail will be sent through normal sendmail/mail routing. If filled in, a direct connection will be made to the SMTP server in order to send the test message.

Report Expired SSL Certificates

Allows notification of expired SSL certificates.

• Disabled - no notifications will be sent.
• When expired - notifications will be sent when certificate has expired.
• # Days before expiration - notifications will be sent starting # days before the certificate expires.

Check Every

Determines the frequency of monitoring.

Timeout

The amount of time that we'll wait for your site to respond. Leave it set to 30 seconds for most web sites.

IP Address

The IP address that your site resolved to when it was configured. If the site you are trying to monitor does not have a DNS name then this field must be completed.

Port

"Ports" are gateways into an internet device. Use this field only if you really know what you're doing.

Resolve DNS?

DNS resolution is the process of determining the IP address for a given domain name using the network of Domain Name Servers. Select "Yes" if you want us to resolve DNS for your monitored site every time that we prepare to conduct a test. Note: the IP address field is not updated if your IP address changes, however, monitoring will continue to test the IP that the Internet's DNS servers tell us is associated with your site.

Monitoring Is

Enables or disables monitoring for this site only. Please note that it takes a few minutes for these updates to distribute to all monitoring locations.

Notify on Error?

Turn notification alerts on or off for this site. Please note that it takes a few minutes for these updates to distribute to all monitoring locations. See the footnote in the Manage Notifiers help page Configure Standard (Availability) Notifications section for additional information.

TCP Traceroute on Network Error?

Select Yes and AlertSite will conduct a TCP traceroute and send a notice to all E-mail alert recipients when we issue an alert for a network connectivity issue. A traceroute prints the route packets take to reach a host and is used by administrators and engineers in fault diagnosis.

Notify on Content Change?

Select Yes and we will let you know if the size of your HTML page changes (vs. the size that it was when we last tested).

Follow Redirection?

Some web sites are redirected to a URL other than the one that was requested. This is not uncommon and is useful when, for example, a web site is moving to a new server. The URL is simply redirected to the new IP address until the change notice has been fully propagated to all domain name servers.

Select Yes if you want us to automatically route monitoring to the redirected URL. Note that we will only follow redirection for 1 "hop" (more than 1 is not good practice anyway).

Keyword or Phrase

We'll search for the words that you enter here and send an alert if we don't find it.

Match Type

Allows selection between the following types of keyword or pattern matches:

• Plain Text: Text match using simple keywords or phrases.
• Regular Expression: Complex pattern matching using programmatic-style regular expressions.

Please see our Regular Expression Tutorial for further information.

Invert Match

Reverses the result of a successful keyword or pattern match so it is reported as a non-match. Likewise, unsuccessful matches are reported as a match.

This is useful when you would like to be notified if a particular keyword or pattern suddenly appears on your site which is not normally present.

This option may be used for both Plain Text or Regular Expression matches.

HTTP Method

Leave this as GET unless you want to monitor an HTML FORM (see How to Monitor a Web FORM for more information).

Userid/Password

If your web page is protected by Basic Realm Authentication you can enter the userid and password here to access it.

Additional Check Boxes

• Use Compression - Accept compressed html from the web site to reduce the size of the received html
• Use Caching (Repeat Visitor) - Cache the html from the web server so we can use it the next time we test
• Report Redirects (HTTP 301/302) as Errors - Raise an alert when the final return code we receive from your Web server is 301 or 302, indicating an HTTP "redirect".
• Authentication Challenges (HTTP 401/403) as Errors - Raise an alert when the final return code we receive from your Web server is HTTP 401 or 403, indicating an authentication error.
• Disable Local Error Verification - Check this box to suppress the second attempt to verify an error from the same monitoring location, so that second attempt measurement credits are not consumed (Usage-Based Monitoring only). The default verification behavior for all new devices is set in the Manage Account screen Preferences section.
• Disallow AlertSite QA Testing - Setting this option will exclude this device from participating in AlertSite's comprehensive quality assurance testing program. Participation is voluntary. To set the default testing behavior for all new devices, select from the dropdown box labeled Default new devices to in the Preferences section of the Manage Account screen.

Fullpage Options

These options are available if the device has the Fullpage option or is a Usage-Based site plan.

• Check Page Objects - interval for checking objects; must be greater than or equal to monitoring interval
• Timeout Objects after - number of seconds to wait before timing out on the object load
• Send Notification on Object Errors - Send an alert if an error is detected on any object
• Report/Notify if Object Size Changes - Send an alert if the size of the object changes
• Report/Notify if Objects Are Missing or New - Send an alert when an object is no longer detected or a new object appears

Back to top
Back to index