How do you monitor website uptime?

Direct answer

To monitor website uptime, configure an external HTTP(S) check to your primary URL on a schedule, validate the response (status code and optionally content), route failures to alerts, and review incidents regularly. Start simple, then add regions and deeper assertions as risk demands.

Steps

1. Pick the URL that best represents user success (often / or a dedicated /health that still reflects real stack dependencies if appropriate).
2. Set interval aligned with business impact (minutes for revenue paths; longer for low-risk pages).
3. Assertions: Minimum status code; add keyword or checksum checks if static content must not drift unexpectedly.
4. Alerting: Define who gets paged vs notified; include runbook links.
5. Dashboards: Track uptime %, MTTR, and recurring causes—not only red/green.

Pitfalls

• Monitoring only from your office network
• Ignoring SSL and redirect chains
• Alerting on the first transient blip without confirmation

Frequently asked questions

Do I need multiple regions?

If users are global or you rely on a single-region CDN/edge, multi-region checks catch localized failures.

What about SPAs?

Check a stable API or server-rendered signal; client-only rendering can confuse naive keyword checks.