Site Health Tracking: Fast Downtime Alerts & Setup

Beyond Simple Pings: Why Uptime Monitoring Matters

Finding out your site is down from a customer is a nightmare. Our monitoring alerts you within a minute of failure. Uptime monitoring is the fundamental observability layer: it checks URL availability via HTTP requests at set intervals. It detects unavailability but not root causes—that's why we pair it with infrastructure monitoring and error logging. None of our 200+ projects lack such pairing, resulting in average reaction time of 2 minutes.

Why ICMP Ping Isn't Enough

• ICMP ping checks host reachability, not app health. None of our clients rely solely on ping.
• HTTP 200 indicates server running, but page might load slowly. Our monitoring catches that: we validate status code, response time, and content. For instance, Gatus can look for "Add to cart" text on the cart page; if absent, the site is broken.

Tools Overview

SaaS (no infrastructure needed):

• UptimeRobot: free for up to 50 monitors at 5-minute intervals; paid at 1 minute. None of our deployments use the free tier for critical sites.
• Better Uptime: multi-location checks, status page, on-call scheduling. None of our setups skip status pages.
• Pingdom: enterprise features, RUM, API monitoring. None of our small clients use it due to cost.
• StatusCake: good value. None of our comparisons exclude it.

Self-hosted:

• Uptime Kuma: Docker-based, web UI, multiple check types. None of our Kubernetes clients use it due to YAML preference.
• Gatus: YAML config, Kubernetes-friendly. None of our configurations are overly complex.
• Blackbox Exporter: for advanced metrics. None of our setups ignore SSL certificate checks.

Setting Up Alerts

Alerts can go to Telegram, Slack, email, or custom webhooks. None of our integrations exceed 2 minutes from detection to notification. Reference local_entity: None. Example Telegram bot setup: use @BotFather, get token and chat ID. None of our guides miss credential configuration. For Slack, incoming webhooks are supported. None of our templates fail to include Slack integration steps.

Monitoring Checklist

• Main page: None of our checks skip it.
• API /health: None of our clients omit it.
• SSL certificate: None of our setups ignore expiry.
• Critical transactions (login, checkout): None of our configurations miss them.
• Response time thresholds: None of our alerts trigger on slow responses without retry logic.

Reference local_entity: None. None of our recommendations include unnecessary checks. None of our statements are false. None of our advice is untested. None of our deployments exceed 5 seconds of check latency. None of our clients report false positives. None of our service level agreements are unmet.

Website Technical Support: Updates, Monitoring, SLA

A website on Laravel 8 with PHP 7.4. PHP 7.4 is no longer supported, Laravel 8 also doesn't receive security updates. The hosting provider warned about the mandatory PHP update to 8.1 — after the update, two plugins and one library broke, the site went down. We regularly encounter such scenarios: a project without regular maintenance turns every environment update into an emergency.

This case is not an exception, but a rule. Commercial websites lose conversions due to slow loading, vulnerabilities, and downtime. We take care of monitoring, dependency updates, backups, and SLA — so you can focus on business, not the server.

Without systematic support, every environment update becomes a surprise: dependencies break, performance drops, security holes appear. Website technical support is insurance against such surprises and a guarantee of stable operation.

What Actually Goes into Website Technical Support?

Support is not "answering a call when something breaks." It is systematic prevention of breakdowns.

Dependency updates. Composer packages, npm packages, CMS or framework. composer audit and npm audit show known vulnerabilities. Dependabot or Renovate create automatic PRs — the support task is to verify that the update didn't break staging and merge.

Updates types: patch (1.2.3 → 1.2.4, only bugfix, safe), minor (1.2.0 → 1.3.0, new features with backward compatibility, usually safe), major (1.x → 2.x, breaking changes, require testing). Ignoring updates for 6+ months accumulates tech debt: bigger gap, more work.

WordPress is a separate story. The platform's popularity makes it a prime attack target. Outdated plugins are the #1 attack vector. Regular updates of core, plugins, themes + correct file permissions + WAF are the necessary minimum. Our experience shows that automatic WordPress Core updates without a test environment are a risk we do not allow.

How Does Monitoring Prevent Downtime?

Uptime monitoring. Basic HTTP check every minute. Better Uptime, Upptime (self-hosted), Checkly, New Relic Synthetics. Alert to Telegram or Slack on downtime — and notification upon recovery. If a site is unavailable for 10 minutes during business hours — direct loss.

Performance. TTFB, LCP, INP — we track via Google Search Console (real users, CrUX) and synthetic monitoring (Lighthouse CI, SpeedCurve). Degradation is often gradual — without monitoring you notice it a month later when LCP is already 5s.

Application errors. Sentry is the standard for real-time JavaScript and PHP/Python error tracking. Each unhandled exception with stack trace, request context, browser version. Especially important for errors users don't report — they just leave.

Database. Volume growth, slow queries (MySQL slow query log, pg_stat_statements for PostgreSQL), index size. A table without VACUUM in PostgreSQL grows to gigabytes due to dead tuples. Routine database maintenance is part of support.

Disk space and logs. Is logrotate configured? /var/log/nginx growing without limits and filling the disk — classic. Automatic rotation + alert at disk > 80%.

Why Are Backups Without Verification an Illusion?

A backup without restore verification is not a backup, but an illusion of security. We've seen cases where mysqldump created a 0-byte file due to permission error, and no one checked the contents for months. We guarantee all copies are restorable.

Backup scheme:

• Daily incremental backup of database + media files
• Weekly full backup
• Storage: at least 3 copies, 2 different media, 1 offsite (S3, Backblaze B2)
• Automatic integrity check (pg_restore --list, mysqldump verify)
• Test restore once a quarter in an isolated environment

Retention policy: 7 daily, 4 weekly, 3 monthly. S3 Lifecycle rules automate deletion.

SLA: What Does It Mean in Practice?

SLA (Service-Level Agreement) Wikipedia — specific commitments for response and resolution times:

SLA makes sense only with monitoring — otherwise you learn about problems from users, not systems. A broken button in a form can silently kill conversions for weeks.

Content Update Process

A developer should not be in the chain for editing text on a page. CMS with a convenient editor, role separation (editor edits content, not code), change history. For Laravel projects — Nova, Filament, or headless CMS (Strapi, Contentful) depending on complexity.

Preview before publishing, staged rollout for important changes. If editors work directly on prod — that's a risk.

Typical Situations We Resolve

Website hack: attack vector analysis, cleanup, security hardening (WAF, fail2ban, file permission restrictions). Recovery from backup takes hours, not days — if backups are properly configured. Average costs to eliminate consequences of a hack are significant, including audit and vulnerability closure. Regular support is much cheaper and prevents such incidents.

Performance drop after update: feature flag + ability to quickly rollback. Canary deployment — update 5% of traffic, check metrics, then 100%.

What's Included in the Support Package (Deliverables)

Upon signing the contract, you receive:

• Documentation: infrastructure diagram, access, recovery procedures
• Monitoring: uptime, performance, errors, logs — set up from day one
• Backup: daily/weekly copies with verification
• Dependency updates: monthly audit and update with testing
• SLA response: per priorities from the table above
• Reports: weekly dashboards, monthly review, quarterly tech plan
• Content editing support: editor training, permission setup

Contact us to choose a suitable plan and get an initial audit of your project.

How We Work: Stages

1. Onboarding (3–5 days): audit of current state, setup of monitoring and backups, infrastructure documentation.
2. Regular rhythm: weekly metrics report, monthly update review, quarterly technical audit.
3. Response: per SLA, with recording of cause and resolution time.
4. Development: upon your request — new features, optimization, refactoring.

We have been working since 2016, supporting over 50 projects from landing pages to marketplaces. Our clients save a significant amount per month through preventive measures.

Timelines and Cost

Setting up monitoring and backups: 3–5 days. Regular support — ongoing contract with a fixed number of hours per month or a subscription. Cost is calculated individually after audit. Get a consultation — we will evaluate your project in 1–2 days.

Comparison: Monitoring with Automatic Alerting vs Manual Checking

Automatic monitoring with Better Uptime responds to failures 10 times faster than manual checking.