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It's 3 A.M. - Do You Know What Your Website's Doing?
By Merle http://MCPromotionsPress.com

It's 3AM do you know if your website is up? What's that you say, 
Of course it is?" Everyone knows the Web is open 24 hours a day, 
7 days a week. Right? Wrong!!! If you don't know how, or don't 
take the time to regularly monitor your website, then you have 
no way of knowing if your site is actually up or down and just 
how reliable your host really is. 

By utilizing a "Monitoring Service" you can monitor the site's: 
performance, availability, reliability and security. Servers do 
need to be occasionally rebooted and depending on the quality 
of your host, some may have more problems and downtime than 
others. The old adage "you get what you pay for" always applies 
here as well. 

So how do you keep tabs on your website? Glad you asked. There 
are plenty of online services (some are even free) that will 
monitor your host's server at specific intervals. For example, 
some check as often as every 60 minutes and notify you by email 
or other means whenever your site becomes unreachable.

Let's take a look at a few of these services:

1) NetWhistle: http://www.NetWhistle.com

This monitoring service will test your site from multiple 
geographical locations and detects down time within seconds. 
You can choose the way you'd like to be notified, for example, 
by Pager, Cell Phone, or Email. 

Pricing varies with a basic check on your server every 20 
minutes for one page of your site starting at just $4.00 a 
month. 

NetWhistle can perform a variety of tests such as: checking 
TCP & Port Responses, checking web pages for errors, test your 
SSL Security, test your submission forms, password Protected 
pages and more.

Sign up to get your first 15 days free. Monthly payments are 
then charged to your credit card.

2) AtWatch: http://www.AtWatch.com

You can now be alerted immediately when your site goes down. 
Pricing starts at $17.95 a month and then goes up from there, 
depending on the plan you choose.

You can select monitoring frequencies of 5, 20, or 60 minutes 
and be alerted of any problems via email, pager or Cell Phone. 
Sign up for a 14-day free trial.

3) AlertMeFirst: http://www.AlertMeFirst.com

With this service you can choose to check your server as 
frequently as every two minutes to once an hour. You choose 
the way in which you'd like to be notified of any problems.

Again with your choice of email or pager. All results are put 
into easy to read reports so you can watch for any trends. Only 
$24.00 a month.

4) SiteUpTime: http://www.SiteUpTime.com

A free website monitoring service that logs detailed reports of 
your sites downtime/uptime each month. This service will alert 
you by email if any problem is found when trying to connect to 
your site. You can choose monitoring intervals of 30 to 60 
minutes. If you need more options, they do offer a "Premium" 
Service starting at only $5.00 per month.

5) WebSitePulse: http://www.WebSitePulse.com

Offering a free monitoring plan for one host, they'll check your 
site every hour. The alert notifications are delivered by Email 
or Cell Phone and includes information about the different types 
of errors and the date and time that they occurred. Real time 
reports are available with daily and weekly logs of server 
activity.

Other, more "full featured" monitoring accounts are available 
starting at just $9.00 a month and then go up from there, 
depending on your individual wants and needs. 

6) SiteProbe: http://www.SiteProbe.com

Checks the status of your website hourly, 24 hours a day, 7 days 
a week. Offering a free service that alerts you by email when 
your site can't be reached. For a small fee you can upgrade to 
have your site checked more often. In order to keep the service 
free they do request that you log in every 30 days, or your 
account will be deleted.

Remember, just because the internet and your site are open 24-7, 
it certainly doesn't guarantee that your host is. By using a 
third party monitoring service to verify your viability, you can 
stay abreast of any problems with your website instantly. 

If you run an E-commerce site, every time your site is 
un-accessible to your potential customers, "you're losing money, 
that's going to your competitors!" By keeping a watchful eye on 
your web host, you'll find out just how reliable their service 
is, and that's ultimately important to your bottom line.

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Merle operates http://EzineAdAuction.com "Where Some of the BEST 
Deals in Ezine Ads are Made". Need help with your website traffic? 
Then you need this home study course which shows you step by step 
how to market and promote your site the right way.
http://www.mcpromotions.com/johnreese.htm
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