AlertBox is a free Firefox add-on that can be used to monitor any changes on Internet web pages. You can use it to monitor price changes on Amazon, new replies or posts on your favorite web site or new public photos on a user’s Flickr photo stream.

Configuration of elements that you want to monitor is simple and straightforward. All you need to do is to select the element on the page that you want to monitor, right-click and select AlertBox > Add alert for changes in clicked element.

The extension can not only monitor specific elements on a page, but also the page as a whole. This is done with a right-click anywhere on the page and the selection of the option under the Alertbox context menu entry.

The Firefox add-on displays a notification whenever one of the tracked elements or web pages gets updated. The notification leads directly to a page where the changes are highlighted. These changes are displayed as a history on a local page in the browser.

Another option to configure the monitoring comes in the form of the Alert Config Panel. This panel can be opened with the shortcut Ctrl-Shift-z or via Tools > Alert Config Panel. It opens at the bottom of the all pages that are currently open in the web browser.

All page elements become selectable right away on left-click for as long as the panel is open in Firefox. The panel offers more options, including one to select the default interval in which the select page is checked for updated contents.

Experienced users can switch to an advanced view which allows them to select any script, CSS or HTML code in the source code of the page and combine that with content filters for advanced tracking operations.

The extension’s settings are only linked on the monitoring page where all tracked pages and page elements are displayed. Here it is possible to configure different notification types, e.g. sound notifications, and to register an account to enable email notifications.

Users can last but not least configure the update check interval on the page for all tracked elements and web pages they have previously added, check the most recent version of the web pages that they monitor.

Firefox users who are looking for an easy to use extension that is offering them advanced feature if needed should take a closer look at AlertBox. The extension can be installed from the official Mozilla Firefox add-on repository.

There are three options on how to stay informed about downtimes. The first two options are managed by the webmaster or system administrator. Online services and computer programs are available to check a website regularly to see if it positively responds to those checks. The third option is a hosting company that does the monitoring for the webmaster.

Karen’s Net Monitor is a website monitor for the Windows operating system that can check websites, email servers and IP addresses.

Two websites are configured on startup that are checked regularly. Websites are displayed with a checkbox that indicates if they are being monitored. A check log is displayed at the bottom of the main screen as well as overall stats and stats for individual jobs that are selected.

The testing interval can also be configured in the screen.

New websites and properties can be added by clicking on the Edit Settings button. Here it is possible to add new websites, email servers and ping checks.

The program has no options to test services that run on a web server or to check responses on a site. A common check in many monitoring programs is to see if a previously defined text is returned on the website or server that is being checked.

Karen’s Net Monitor can be used for basic network monitoring tasks. The program is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows and available for download at the developer’s website.

Pingdom has recently released a desktop application that will display the status of all websites and servers that are monitored by a specific Pingdom account. The Pingdom notifier is currently only available for the Windows operating system. It will query the status of the Pingdom account regularly and notify the user if a check of a website, server or service failed. This can be handy depending on the notification settings of each service in the Pingdom account.

You might recall that Pingdom offers email, SMS, iPhone and Twitter notifications with SMS being limited to a specific amount that can be raised by buying additional SMS packages. Not every web service, server or website will therefor be configured to notify the user by SMS if the service fails. The Pingdom desktop notifier is therefor mostly an additional option to monitor their websites while working on the computer.

The notifier will display a popup on the computer desktop if one of the website checks fails. All options in the notifier lead directly to the Pingdom control panel on the Internet.

The Pingdom Desktop Notifier complements the other notification options. It might be useful in this regard but has the severe disadvantage that the webmaster needs to be in front of the computer to notice the notifications. The software program is available for download at the Pingdom website. It is compatible with Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Each entry consists of a url that will be monitored, a descriptive title and the choice of monitoring a website for any changes or for specific keyword appearances. Some sources that can be monitored can only be monitored by keywords. If keywords are selected it is possible to set the free website monitor to monitor the website for single keyword appearances or only if all keywords are found. The frequency can be set to seconds, minutes, hours or days with the default being 15 minutes.

The monitoring software will display alerts if changes are detected on any of the selected websites. Alerts can either be sounds, popups or both simultaneously. It will also add all alerts to the list of alerts which comes in handy if changes have been found during absence.

Websites are opened directly in a popup window with the keywords or changed parts highlighted for easier discovery.

The website monitor will run on most Microsoft operating systems. It ran fine on a Windows XP Service Pack 3 test system.

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

No one can manually check his websites 24 hours 7 days a week which means that some service is needed that monitors the websites automatically. In addition programs that are run on a local computer can be used to check the websites periodically to make sure they are still up and running. That’s the only convenient way to check if you own more than a few websites.

The tool hpObserver is one of those programs that can monitor the status of a website. You can configure it to run in intervals of 1, 5 and 10 minutes or manually. Four methods are available that check the website, they are: ICPM (ping), TCP / IP, Imitate Browser, XML HTTP.

The method defines largely which data can be collected from the website. An ICPM cannot for instance return the size of the website while the Imitate Browser method can.

The application has some shortcomings though. The feature it is lacking the most is in my opinion a way to notify the user if he is not near his computer. At the moment the application is only useful if run constantly and if a user is present to take a look at the results regularly.

Another thing that I really missed was a help file or documentation. There is none whatsoever and it is kinda hard to figure out what the settings and different methods do and how you can take advantage of them in the best way. Lastly you can only select one method which will be used to check all websites. It is not possible to configure individual settings for each website.

Mr. Uptime is a Firefox Extension that steps in and removes the burden from the user who wants to connect to a website that is down at the moment. You can add a website that is currently unavailable to the extension which then checks periodically if it is up again.

The checks are not done by the extension or your computer but by a website monitoring service. Websites can be added by right-clicking on that website and selecting Mr. Uptime from the menu or by displaying the toolbar which is only displayed for the currently active website and not all Firefox tabs.

It is possible to monitor status changes using http status codes (404 for not found for instance) or keywords that the website should or should not contain.

The default period to monitor websites is set to 168 hours which should be enough in most cases. If the website is still down after that time it will be automatically removed from the watch list.

Read More:

Mr. Uptime Download