Port Connect Check Now Available

2012/04/06 Leave a comment

There are thousands of network protocols NodePing doesn’t have checks for (yet) :-) But that shouldn’t stop you from being able to monitor the availability of your services.  Using our new Port Connect check, you can test the responsiveness of nearly any TCP protocol on any port.

This is great news for those running lesser-known services, or services on non-standard ports, who are having a hard time finding a monitoring service to help them track availability. Our Port Connect check will attempt to create a standard TCP socket connection to your host on the specified port and report back if your server accepted the connection.

The Port Connect check can also help ensure that a particular port is not accepting traffic as well. This is useful for making sure your firewall is blocking a specific port for services that need a little extra vigilance. The check will send a notification if it is ever able to successfully connect.

You can learn more about the Port Connect check and how to configure it in our documentation.  If you don’t yet have a NodePing account, you can sign up for a 15-day free trial and give our new Port Connect check a try.  We think you’ll like it.

Filed under Monitoring, NodePing Updates, Using NodePing

FTP Check Now Looks for Files Too!

2012/04/05 Leave a comment

Until today, the NodePing FTP check was fairly basic but we’ve rolled up our sleeves to add the awesome sauce and are proud to announce our new and improved FTP monitoring check.

Features:

  • Monitor FTP on any port, not just 21
  • Supports anonymous logins
  • Verify FTP user logins (optional)
  • Verify the existence, or non-existence of a file on your FTP server (optional)

Detailed information about how to configure your FTP checks can be found in our documentation.

The “file exists” feature in particular can be a huge help for those who wish to do more than just check to see if their FTP service is currently running. We’ll send you a notification if that important file goes missing from your FTP service – or if a particular file suddenly appears! This can be used to receive an alert when an application error log file gets created.  Or you could write your own scripts for internal processes that trigger NodePing SMS alerts by touching files on your FTP server.

The new enhancements are available on your account now at NodePing.  If you don’t have a NodePing account, you can sign up today for a free 15-day trial and for $10 a month you can monitor 1000 servers and get unlimited email and international SMS alerts.

Filed under FTP, Monitoring, NodePing, NodePing Updates, Using NodePing

SSL Certificate Check

2012/03/28 2 Comments

An SSL certificate is an important part of serving up secure websites. It puts the ‘S’ in HTTPS and gives your visitors that warm fuzzy feeling when they see that padlock in their browsers. But those SSL certificates don’t last forever. Most have to be renewed every 1-3 years and should you forget and let that certificate expire, your visitors will be met with an ugly “This Site is Untrusted‘ message instead of your great content. Let NodePing keep an eye on your SSL certificates with our new SSL check available today.

Monitoring your SSL certificate with NodePing will allow you to receive notifications if the certificates is nearing its expiration, is replaced with an invalid certificate, or if your webserver is incorrectly serving it. You can also configure how many days in advance of expiration you’d like to receive the notification, giving you time to renew and install a new certificate without interruption.

The new SSL check is just one more link in your comprehensive server monitoring chain. NodePing is happy to keep an eye on your SSL certificates. If you don’t have an account yet, sign up for a free 15 day trial at http://nodeping.com.

Let us know what you think of the new SSL check in the comments below.

Filed under Monitoring, NodePing, NodePing Updates, SSL, Using NodePing

Server Monitoring from Europe

2012/03/06 4 Comments

NodePing is happy to announce we’ve added a new region to our check locations. You can now choose to run your checks from our North American or new European regions… or both!

Website Monitoring

We’ve heard from many of our customers with a presence in Europe that a check location on that side of the pond would be a huge benefit. Thanks to our great providers, IntroVPS and RobHost, we added 4 new probe servers in the following locations:

  • London, England
  • Amsterdam, Netherlands
  • Falkenstein, Germany
  • Bucharest, Romania
Check out our FAQ for ip addresses and more information on our check locations.

We’ve also introduced the idea of a ‘default region‘ for your NodePing account. For new customers, you’ll set your default region when you sign up. Current customers have their default region set to ‘North America’. The default region can be changed in the ‘Scheduling‘ tab. When you create checks, they will be automatically run from your default region. You may, of course, decide to run any check from any region (including multiple regions and ‘worldwide’) by simply choosing the desired region from the check configuration when you create it. You can also change an existing check by selecting a different region in the check configuration at any time.

When you assign your checks to a region, they will be run from a random server in that region. If an ‘up/down’ event is detected, NodePing will immediately and automatically recheck from other servers in that same region. The number of rechecks is based on your configuration of the check – the default is 2 rechecks. After verifying the ‘up/down’ status on other servers in the same region, we’ll send out your configured email and SMS notifications.

Everything is included with NodePing so the new European region checking is already part of your flat-rate $10 a month subscription which includes your 1000 site/server checks, unlimited logins, contacts, contact groups, emails and international SMS. If you’re not already a customer, sign up for your free 15-day trial.

We’re already planning to add even more check regions to NodePing – Oceania maybe? South America? East Asia? Let us know in the comments what new region you’d like to see added next.

Filed under Building NodePing, Monitoring, NodePing, NodePing Updates

When 200 Isn’t Enough

2011/12/09 Leave a comment

Website monitoring seems like a simple thing.  Most HTTP checks look for a response in the 200-399 range, 200 being the most common HTTP response meaning “Server responded correctly – here’s the resource you were looking for.”  But if you’re one of the millions of people or businesses that use Joomla, checking for 200 just isn’t enough.

Now don’t get me wrong, I like Joomla.  It’s a fine CMS and I’ve built many custom modules and plugins for it.  There are plenty of great websites running on it.  But you have to keep a close eye out for errors.

Today, one of our clients had an issue with the network storage on their server and the file system was quickly remounted in read-only mode.  This is expected and even prescribed behavior for mount point errors.  But MySQL, the database, didn’t like not being able to write to its tables and logs and quickly failed.  That, in turn, took the public website offline.  Joomla presented a big white page with the error message Database Error: Unable to connect to the database:Could not connect to MySQL.  The site was not working as expected… surely the website monitoring service would send an alert!  Nope.  The database access error was returned with an HTTP status of 200.  The web server was saying “Everything’s OK.”  No alert was sent from the basic HTTP check.  How embarrassing is it to get the news that your website is down on a call from a customer?

With NodePing, you can use our HTTP Content checks to make sure this doesn’t happen to your Joomla (or other CMS) site.  It works by simply searching for particular text within the returned HTML page.  If you add a check that searches for your copyright footer, it will fail as expected if the database is unavailable and the above error message was returned on the check.  You’ll receive your email or SMS notification that it’s down and can react quickly.  Conversely, if you know the exact error you want to avoid, you can run a negative content check so that it will alert you when the response of the check DOES contain the text ‘Database Error’.

With today’s complex web applications depending on many moving parts, it’s not enough to just check for a 200 response from a web server.  You have to dig deeper, and NodePing has just the shovel you need.

Filed under Monitoring, NodePing, Using NodePing Tagged with , ,

DNS Monitoring for Both Sides

2011/11/11 4 Comments

DNS monitoring, like a coin, has two sides: “What does my DNS server say?” and “What does ‘public’ DNS say?”  With NodePing server monitoring, you can ask both questions.

Our DNS check allows you to send a query of a specific type to your DNS server (or a public DNS server) and test the response against a string you define.  For example, you can verify that your website domain resolves to your web server’s static IP address and have NodePing send you an email or SMS alert when either the server or the response fails.

DNS queries can be made for the following types and the response verified:

  • A
  • CNAME
  • MX
  • NS
  • PTR
  • SOA
  • TXT

You can find more info on the DNS checks and our other check types in our documentation.

If you don’t have a NodePing account yet, try out our new DNS monitoring checks for free with a 15-day trial.

Filed under DNS, Monitoring, NodePing, NodePing Updates, Using NodePing Tagged with ,

Now with Unlimited International SMS

2011/11/02 3 Comments

Until today, NodePing  offered SMS notifications only to US-based numbers. But do not despair, our friends across the great ponds, we’re happy to announce that we’ve added unlimited international SMS notifications to our server monitoring service. Just add your mobile number to your contact record in plus format (example for UK ‘+445555555555’), and then set it as the notification number in your checks. As always, here at NodePing, it doesn’t cost any extra.  Same great service, same great price – you’ve leveled up!

Globally, mobile networks have a lot of variability and it is possible that some carriers won’t work with our SMS initially. If that’s the case with your carrier please let us know and we’ll do what we can to resolve it.

Give us a digital high-five in the comments if you’re glad to see international SMS added to NodePing!

Filed under Monitoring, NodePing, NodePing Updates, Using NodePing Tagged with ,

6 Sources of Residual Income for the Web Developer

2011/09/26 4 Comments

Most web developers I know are hired for site creation, or re-creation and when the job is done, that’s the end of the revenue from that client until something is broken or some other change needs to happen. But with a little extra effort on your part, you can transition a ‘project’ client into residual income. Not only will this keep a steady flow of cash coming in, but you’ll be able to more easily maintain those valuable relationships with your clients so when the next site or re-design happens, you’ll be the one they call.

Consider adding or packaging a few of the following ‘services’ with your development pitch.

  1. Hosting
    Chances are, you’re already doing some of this. The ability to hand over a turn-key website solution makes it easy to add the ‘web hosting’ line item to your bill. Given the low cost of shared hosting like Bluehost or  HostGator, you can easily charge a modest monthly hosting fee and make a nice margin on it. If you don’t ‘do’ hosting – sign up as an affiliate on a hosting company you recommend. Affiliate programs typically give you a commission for sending them customers. It’s easy to do and doesn’t cost anything. Heck, the two links in this paragraph are affiliate links – so go sign up! <grin>
  2. Monitoring
    If the site is worth developing and hosting, it’s worth keeping an eye on. No matter who the host is, your client (and you, if you’re hosting it – see #1) should be the first ones to know if it has gone down. Get yourself a website monitoring account at NodePing (come on, you saw that plug coming a mile away). For only $10/month, you can set up 1000 URLs to keep an eye on. Resell some of those checks to your client – charge them whatever you think is fair and they’re willing to pay. Set your client up as a ‘Notifications Only‘ contact and they’ll get an email or SMS whenever the site goes offline – and when it comes back up too. With NodePing’s new public reports, you can create a URL on your branded website and iframe in the public report so your client can bask in the glow of their uptime graph. If you don’t know how to iframe one page into another, you’re not the target audience of this blog post – but just in case, here’s a link on how to iframe.
  3. SSL Certificates
    If your client’s site has a login form, they’ll need an SSL certificate. The ease of wireless ‘sidejacking’ using Firesheep and similar tools, you should know better than to have a non-SSL login form. Like hosting you can either resell SSL certificates directly or sign up to be an affiliate and earn a commission (usually a percentage) of your client’s spending. Unlike hosting, it takes quite a bit more hoop jumping to become a reseller but with the price of certs and the fact that they need to be re-issued on a regular basis it’s worth the effort.
  4. Payment Processing
    The least fun part of developing ecommerce solutions is the payment gateway integration. Typical reseller/affiliate programs with payment gateways include a percentage of the setup fee, a percentage of monthly fee, and even a per-transaction cut. While Braintree is definitely our preferred gateway here at NodePing (great API and low costs), they unfortunately don’t have a reseller/affiliate program so you may want to stick with some of the old guards like Authorize.net.
  5. Backups
    Your client will need ‘offsite’ backups of their sites and databases. Most of the cheaper hosting companies don’t provide adequate backups, which provides you with an opportunity to sell a much-needed service to your client. Drive Headquarters has a generous referral program and offers both client and server backup capabilities that are very script-able. Just be sure you know how to restore the site from those backups.
  6. Timeshare in Vegas
    OK, this one is just for laughs.  Timeshares are like boats – everybody I’ve ever known who bought one, has also sold one.

If you started adding auxillary services like those above, you could easily see a $100/month/client jump in revenue for just a wee bit of your time in administrating… multiply that times your current client base and you just got a nice raise!  Felicidades!

More importantly, providing extra services will help you maintain a relationship with your client, so the next time they need a $7k makeover on their site, yours is the only bid they’ll consider… after all, you’re doing so much for them already.

So there are 5 ways you can leverage your web development relationship with your client into a bit of residual income.  It’s by no means an exhaustive list.  If you’ve got better channels for residual income or maybe just excellent suggestions for the resell-able or referr-able services listed above, share it with us in the comments.

Filed under Monitoring, Web Development Tagged with , , ,

US SMS? Yeah, we got that…

2011/09/14 Leave a comment

You asked for it…

For our US customers NodePing now offers unlimited SMS as part of the $10/month plan.  And you thought we couldn’t pack any more value in there!

All you need to do is add your 10-digit phone number to your contact record and to your check notifications and those important UP/DOWN messages will flow directly to your phone.

For customers outside the US, we’re working on direct SMS integration and hope to implement it in the near future.  Until then, please continue to use the email-to-SMS gateway addresses provided by your mobile carrier.  If your mobile operator isn’t listed at the link provided, please contact them directly and ask what your email-to-SMS address is.

Filed under NodePing, NodePing Updates

Website monitoring with a backflip

2011/09/02 2 Comments

A standard website monitoring check will fail when the page isn’t returned at all or the web server reports a page missing. What happens when your site is running but there is a problem with dynamic content, like a feed is missing or a list of recent posts is empty?

In those cases the page might be “working” from the web server’s point of view (and so not reported as a 404 or 500 error), but not displaying what you want. You don’t want your visitors to see messages like “Error establishing a database connection” or “0 articles found“.

NodePing HTTP Content check tests if particular text shows up on a given webpage.  Use the setting ‘Contains‘ to be alerted when specific text does NOT appear on a page.  But in this case, we want to receive an alert when our error messages DO appear on the page.  Use the ‘Does not contain‘ setting and the error message text as the search term to be notified when that happens.

For example, if you had an article list that was dynamic, so you never knew exactly what was going to show up there but you know something is wrong if the text ‘0 articles found‘ appears.  Maybe the database is offline or you haven’t written anything recently enough.  You’ll want to receive an alert.

Simply configure a HTTP Content check for the page and switch the text setting to ‘Does not contain‘ and add ‘0 articles found‘ to the text area.  This will check the webpage and as long as it does NOT contain the words ‘0 articles found‘, the check will pass.  If that text ever shows up, the check will fail and you’ll receive an alert, as expected.

There’s a thousand other uses for the HTTP Content check.  Get creative and make sure you’re alerted when errors happen.

Filed under Monitoring, NodePing, NodePing Updates, Using NodePing

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