Practical, technically accurate articles about uptime, downtime, HTTP status codes, SSL certificates, DNS and website performance.
Uptime monitoring automatically checks your website from the outside and alerts you when it stops responding. This guide covers how it works, the types of checks, intervals, alerts, choosing a tool and setting it up.
A website can be up and still too slow to use, or fast whenever it's online but frequently down. Here's how uptime and performance differ, how each is measured and how to monitor both sensibly.
Your server can be running perfectly and visitors still can't reach it if DNS fails. Learn how DNS resolution works, the problems that cause outages, how to diagnose them and how to change records safely.
SSL certificates make HTTPS possible. Learn what they do, how browsers check them, the different validation levels, why expiry causes outages and how to avoid certificate-related downtime.
Website response time is how long your server takes to start answering a request. Learn what each phase means, how to measure it yourself, what counts as good, and the improvements that make the biggest difference.
You don't need a budget to know when your website goes down. Compare the free options, learn what a good free monitoring plan should include, and set up monitoring in a few minutes.
Every response from a web server starts with a three-digit status code. Learn what the five classes mean, which codes matter most for website owners, and how they affect visitors, monitoring and search engines.
From server crashes and faulty updates to expired certificates and forgotten domain renewals, these are the most common reasons websites go offline, and what you can do to prevent each one.
Everything you need to start monitoring a website: the different types of monitoring, the metrics that matter, how checks and alerts work, and the mistakes beginners make most often.
Is the website online, or is it down? Learn seven quick ways to check, how to tell whether the problem is on your side or the site's, and how to narrow a real outage down to DNS, SSL, the server or the application.
Uptime is the share of time your website is available to visitors. Here's how it's calculated, what the "nines" really mean in minutes of downtime, and why measuring it yourself matters.
Every article answers a specific question about keeping websites online, from the basics of uptime to the details of DNS and SSL. Pick a topic to start.
How uptime monitoring works, what to measure and how to set it up.
4 guidesWhy websites go down, how to diagnose outages and how to respond.
2 guidesResponse times, server load and the metrics that describe speed.
1 guideWhat the codes your server returns mean and when each one is correct.
1 guideTLS certificates, expiry, renewal and common certificate errors.
1 guideHow the Domain Name System works and how DNS problems cause outages.
1 guideMaking websites faster and more reliable for visitors.
1 guideMonitor your own websites for free and get alerted when something goes wrong.
