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Set up uptime monitoring for your sites

Resource monitoring watches the server from the inside. Uptime monitoring watches it from the outside — the visitor’s view — so you find out the moment your site is unreachable, even if the server itself looks fine.

Why both matter

A server can be healthy on CPU/memory while the site is down to the world — expired DNS, a crashed app, a firewall change, a lapsed certificate. Only an external check catches that, because it hits your real URL the way a user does.

What to monitor

  • The site’s main URL over HTTPS — expect a 200 OK.
  • A health endpoint if your app has one (e.g. /health) — cheaper and more precise than loading the homepage.
  • Certificate expiry — good monitors warn you before SSL lapses (a backstop to auto-renewal).

How to set it up

Use an external uptime service (there are free tiers) that pings your URL every minute or few from outside your network and alerts you (email, SMS, Slack) when it fails. Point it at your public URL — nothing to install on the server.

A simple internal check for yourself:

Terminal window
curl -I https://yourdomain.com      # expect: HTTP/2 200

When an alert fires — triage fast

  1. Is it really down, or just slow? Load it yourself.
  2. Server up? Check resources.
  3. App error? → 502 / 504.
  4. Nothing resolves? → DNS not resolving.
  5. Certificate warning? → Fix SSL errors.

Keep the logs handy

When you’re debugging a blip, logs tell you what happened — read & manage logs.

Running OrbixPanel? Pair external uptime checks with built-in resource alerts for full coverage. OrbixPanel.com → — the free, self-hosted, AI-powered hosting control panel.