Web servers are vital to make sure that your website is up and running. Yet sometimes there can be hiccups in service and the response time of your web server can change drastically. Slow server response time can make the difference between a reliable website that anyone can access and a website that drives users away, perhaps to your competition.

Here’s a brief example - just recently domain and hosting provider GoDaddy experienced downtime with their servers which resulted in thousands of websites either being down or responding slowly (or even just hanging, never loading the page). As a result GoDaddy had to go through a big PR mess to get everything fixed. They also had to deal with a throng of angry business owners who rely on their servers to make a living.

In almost every industry, customers expect to learn most information about a company from their web site. Consumers increasingly use a company’s site to place purchases, pay bills, and seek customer support.

Smart leaders of companies also utilize their website to track current and potential customers and learn valuable information about them. With catalogues and long sales pitches over the phone on the decline, and cloud computing very much already here, it’s important that your online presence is solid.

Performance and availability monitoring plays a crucial role for the health and overall wellbeing of  the modern business infrastructure. However, there still exist some common misconceptions associated with remote website and server monitoring practices. We hope that by revealing the real facts, we will help you make an educated decision so that you can use the optimal arsenal of remote monitoring tools to your advantage.

You need to monitor all your resources

Monitoring every single piece of network hardware is not, by all means, mandatory. Monitoring more than what you really need is neither time- nor cost-efficient. Business-critical systems usually represent only a fraction of your infrastructure. Involving people with intimate knowledge of your IT ecosystem in the decision making process will save you money and time. One of the great features of agentless monitoring solutions is scalability. If you are not quite sure about the resources you need to monitor, start with the basic service and a limited set of servers, or websites. You can always expand and spend on remote monitoring when you need it.

There are a lot of interesting ways in which you can use our monitoring services. Engaging in online reputation management is also one of them. A main prerequisite for establishing a good name for you and your business is being transparent. But let's face it, eventually your website will experience downtime. It happens even to the best of sites. And more often than not it is your responsibility keep track of the performance and availability of your website, and take proper action when needed.

In the unfortunate event of your website going down, for one reason or another, it won’t take long for your visitors to find out. It is better for them to learn about it from you rather than speculate on social networks about the outage. Do you remember how Twitter used to have issues remaining online under heavy use? They came up with what became an internet meme - the fail whale. It was their own way of saying: “Yes, there is a problem and we are working on it”.

What’s the fun in having a fully functioning API if you can’t play around with it, right? Sometimes data is needed in different forms to serve a specific purpose. APIs are great when the existing interface and available functions are not enough. Getting data straight to spreadsheets is great for custom reports and graphics. So, let’s learn how to do this.

Today we are going to focus on XML and export data with the HTTP API. Before we start, let me remind you that if you want to replicate and build upon any of what I’m writing below, you will need to register for any of our services – paid, trial or free. They will all give you access to our API and what you have in your account.