The last step in the configuration configures the capturing depths which can be set to first page, first page plus links or whole site. The same menu contains options to allow popups and to set the scanning to be careful which deactivates certain scripts and other potentially malicious contents. The download will start immediately after the last step. The program will display the download progress of all objects on the website.

Experienced users can define objects that should not be downloaded. Among them files like videos, cookies or scripts. Once the website or page has been downloaded it can be browsed in the program interface up to the level it was downloaded from the server.

The website downloader will display all pages that have been downloaded in the sidebar sorted by project name. A download will be initiated for every link pointing to a page that has not been downloaded before. The download speed depends on several factors including the connection speed of the computer system the application runs on.

Different view modes are available that differ from the default html view mode. It is possible to take a look at the contents, attached files (e.g. videos or images) or information (modification date, allowed objects, site and so on). Properties can be accessed for each downloaded website differently or combined for a project. They make it possible to set very specific rules for downloading contents including the number of page revisions to keep or the contents that should be downloaded.

Wysigot is not only a website downloader but also a website monitor. It can be set to monitor websites for changes and notify the user about those changes. Change verifications can be automatic, periodical or manual depending on the user’s choice. Alarms can be set to notify the user if a website has been updated.

The website monitor and downloader uses the rendering engine of Internet Explorer to display the website’s contents. It contains options to import Internet Explorer favorites which is convenient if several of those should be downloaded.

An alternative is the excellent Httrack which runs on Windows, Linux and OSX

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This might sound confusing and difficulty at first but it is not. I use it to check that the http and mysql services are running on my servers. The http connection can be checked with a php script that they offer on their website. Just download and upload it to your web server and make them observe the path that links to the script.

Users get notified in numerous ways if a service fails. They can receive emails, SMS, instant messenger notifications and even phone calls depending on the subscribed plan.

Livewatch is offering one free plan that is good for observing one element of a server, for example the http connection. Each account is getting a certain amount of free SMS and phone calls per month. The free account gets one free SMS per month and unlimited email notifications while the Premium account receives 30 SMS, 15 phone calls and unlimited emails as well.

If you manage multiple servers or want to check on various services running on the server you could subscribe to a paid plan (like I did).

The intervals that are used to check the services are lower in the paid plans as well. The services on a free account are checked every 10 minutes and every 5 minutes if an error was found while the Gold premium services are checked every minute.

SMS are send into foreign countries as well (the service is based in Germany) but are charged double the amount of a single SMS which means that two SMS are subtracted for every single SMS that is send out.

Take a look at the in depth feature list that compares the free and premium accounts.

Here is the database php checker that I’m using in combination with regular expressions to make sure my database is up and running:


$dbhost = 'localhost';
$dbuser = 'enter database user';
$dbpass = 'enter database password;
$conn = mysql_connect($dbhost, $dbuser, $dbpass) or die ('Error');
$dbname = 'enter database name';
mysql_select_db($dbname);
if ($conn) {echo "ok";}
else {echo "fehler";}
?>

This simple script tries to connect to the MySQL database and prints ok if the connection was successful and Error if it was not. I’m using the regular expression /ok/ on the Livewatch website to check if ok is returned which means that the database is up. If ok is not returned the Livewatch service assumes the database is down and will notify me.

I recently had a chat with their excellent support and they offered a bonus for Ghacks readers. If you signup for an account you get an additional 50 cents in your account which is good for 3 SMS. (And no, this is not a referral link, I’m not getting anything if you signup for free or premium accounts. I just like the service very much)

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Once you have grown your traffic to a fairly decent amount, however, downtimes that affect your site are a complete different story, a nuisance that can mean that hundreds of people are unable to get to your site, most of whom are likely to never come back again. In my experience, even when my hosting company promised 99.8% uptime, this began to increasingly seem like meaningless marketing hype when I started getting emails from friends and strangers alike informing me that my site was down at such and such an hour (many of which downtimes occurred in the early am hours when I wouldn’t have been online anyway).

I also noticed that the net effect of this was that I was becoming a bit paranoid; if my traffic seemed lower than it usually is I immediately wondered if me site had been down. I started looking for a resource that would monitor my site for downtimes and inform me automatically so I didn’t have to spend time wondering about it. This is when I found Montastic.

Montastic is a very simple service: create an account then enter in the URLs of the sites you would like it to monitor (up to a limit of 100 sites). It will then check the sites on your list within 10 minute intervals and from 2 locations. If and when it detects that any of the sites are down, it will immediately report this by email or through RSS. Once the site is back up it will report that as well.

What’s interesting about Montastic is that you are not limited to just your sites. After listing my 3 websites I decided to include 2 blogs that are similar to my main blog just for benchmarking purposes. To my surprise I discovered that while my site went down for about 2 hours once this week, these other sites seemed to be down for a few hours at least every other day, which was interesting to know, and made me think that perhaps my hosting company isn’t so bad after all.

Montastic was created by a team of “open source fanatics” that developed it for their own use and decided to make it available to everyone as a 100% free service.

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