That's right, guys, now all the links are 'do-follow'. This means that we help each other - you share your priceless thoughts & ideas and we give you 'clean' direct links to your website. There are some rules that you should be aware of:

  1. Comments are moderated, don't try to publish pure rubbish or spam - we expect to get something more than 2-3 unrelated words in your comments. 

2. No Keywords instead of your name - sorry about that, but let's respect each other. If you want to get a link with anchor text, consider writing us a link exchange offer -- maybe we'll work something out.

  That's it ;) 

Website monitoring is the process of testing or tracking (monitoring) how end-users interact with a website or web application (Wikipedia). Why is website monitoring so important for any business, any company having a web site? The main idea is: you find out that your website/web server experiences troubles of any kind, earlier than your customers.

Why is it necessary for a web hosting company to monitor its servers? Obviously, the same reason: you are notified of server downtime by a webiste monitoring service, and not by your customers. Some really good web monitoring services will not only tell you when your server is down, but also help diagnose the bottlenecks of your system. Another reason for monitoring your servers -- you'll be able to prove that "99.999% uptime" is more than just a statement.

There is one more good reason - some website monitoring companies offer affiliate programs. You can include website monitoring in your services list and you will get a certain fee for every paying customer. Dotcom-Monitor has recently added affiliate program and now pays 25% for each customer who becomes a paid client. You can get more details on the affiliate program here and sign up here.

Minneapolis, July 21, 2008 – Dotcom-Monitor announced today that it has opened a new web monitoring station in Tel Aviv, Israel, that allows its customers to measure the performance of their websites in this significant Middle East market.  Using Dotcom-Monitor’s service, companies on the Internet can proactively monitor how well their websites and web applications respond to various user actions, such as page viewing, online shopping and online form usage, from an external user’s perspective.

The new Tel Aviv monitoring station joins a growing list of Dotcom-Monitor stations worldwide, and was added in response to growing customer demand for improved web monitoring in the Middle East.  Other Dotcom-Monitor monitoring stations are located in major international business hubs that include Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, London and Sydney, as well as in major North American markets.

"External web site monitoring is strategic to any company on the Internet, and especially important to those companies and organizations that conduct business on an international basis," said Vadim Mazo, founder and chief technical officer of Dotcom-Monitor.  "Any type of performance degradation, more matter where in the world it occurs, can have very tangible and negative effects on a company’s online reputation and revenue, so performance monitoring is a bottom line issue for our clients."

Dotcom-Monitor’s customers include financial services companies, healthcare providers, international manufacturers, media outlets, online retailers and governmental organizations.

Application, Network Assurance
For any Internet-enabled entity, Dotcom-Monitor is a highly cost-effective performance insurance policy.  Application monitoring, network monitoring, and website load testing are among the services provided by the company.   By employing Dotcom-Monitor’s offerings, companies can easily and inexpensively validate Quality-of-Service (QoS) and Service Level Agreement (SLA) requirements.
   
Dotcom-Monitor provides extensive real-time reporting using graphical charts that explain success/failure rates for specific performance checks, response/download times, uptime/downtime, load variations by hour/day/week and much more.  For e-commerce sites, Dotcom-Monitor will measure quality of service for each phase of the transaction process as well as performance comparisons among different geographic areas.   Dotcom-Monitor provides instantaneous notification of website and web application performance issues, based on customer configured notification and escalation parameters.

About Dotcom-Monitor:
Dotcom-Monitor is the leader and innovator in advanced website monitoring services.  Founded in 1998, Dotcom-Monitor has saved over 2,000 companies’ money by insuring maximum website uptime—at a cost up to 50 percent less than other services.  Dotcom-Monitor watches businesses from the outside by simulating real-world, end-user actions.  The company ensures that clients are open for business around the world, 24 hours a day.  No additional or no hardware is required to use Dotcom-Monitor’s services. 

McAfee tried to reveal the most dangerous domain zones in its annual report “Mapping the Mal Web”. It seems that some domain zones provide to domain owners more opportunities for violation of security rules then other ones. According to McAfee the most dangerous zones are “.hk” (Hong Kong) – 19.2 % of websites, “.cn” (China) – 11.8% and “.info” – 11.7%. Only 5% of websites of “.com” domain zone are dangerous. Some domain name registrars reduce requirements and deflate to attract more customers. Due to this fact a lot of spammers and developers of harmful codes have opportunity to register domain name. Unfortunately domain name registrars which are responsible for this fact are not mentioned in McAfee report. Another dangerous domain zones are “.ro” (Romania) – 6.8% of websites and “.ru” (Russia) - 6%. The Author of this report is Shane Keats who said that “Mapping the Mal Web” was based on analysis of more than 9.9 million websites. According to McAfee the most secure domain zones are “.gov” – 0.05%, “.jp” (Japan) – 0.1%, “.au” (Australia) – 0.3%.

Todaywebsite becomes integral part of any business. Even when your website has onlyinformational function it is “face”. Website downtime can cause not only the lossof face but also the loss of customers that means that you lose your money. Thereare a lot of different applications which give you an opportunity to monitorwebsite performance. But they have two important disadvantages. The first isthat your website monitoring application is installed on your local machine. Yourwebsite monitoring application performance depends on your Internet providerand your geographic location. Your website can be accessible from one point of theglobe  and to be not accessible fromanother one. The second reason is that usually your website and networkmonitoring applications can’t diagnose the reason of fail.

All that problemsare completely unimportant when you use remote website monitoring and networkmonitoring service like Dotcom-Monitor provides.  

Performance and security of your website and server are crucially important for your business both when you offer complex on-line services and when you have a simple static site. Your web site both corporate and personal is your representation and its work represents reliability and standard of you company. In case your website is a main platform for your business even short-term fail will cause losses. Therefore your website availability and functioning are crucial for your business.

There are some ways to monitor performance of websites and servers. The first one is manual checking. You can check all possible protocols and services with your own hands or engage special employees. But such a way is disadvantageous and can’t give you any guarantee.

Another way is a special website monitoring and network monitoring software. You can install such tools on your local machine and monitor your website and server performance. However such method also has a lot of shortcomings. For example, you website can be available from one point of the country and unavailable from another one. When you use local website and network monitoring tools you can’t notice such fact. Another huge disadvantage is the following: your network monitoring software functioning depends on your Internet provider.

The most reliable and professional method is employing on-line third-party website and network monitoring services. Universally recognized leader in the sphere of website, server and network monitoring is Dotcom-monitor. Since 1998 Dotcom-Monitor provides quality and innovation monitoring services for more than 3000 companies all over the world. Dotcom-monitor has a unique set of tools and services for website and network monitoring with surprisingly big number of notification options.

Network monitoring service is intended for monitoring all possible protocol’s servers such as FTP, SMTP, POP3, etc. Dotcom-Monitor remote agent logs on using a user name and password you provide. It checks server performance and contents. Besides, Dotcom-Monitor provides SMTP/POP3 monitoring service. This feature gives opportunity to carry out end-to-end mail server monitoring. Network monitoring service also includes such opportunities as domain name servers (DNS) monitoring, port monitoring, SOAP/HTTP monitoring, UDP monitoring and ping/ICMP monitoring service which is very useful for checking of integrity of router, firewall and other specific devices. There are also some very specific features as script monitoring service and server temperature monitoring service which is available only for third generation hardware. Such list is exhaustive and includes all necessary tools to provide the best quality of network monitoring service.

Website monitoring is a must-have online service for every e-business. Possibilities of this service are can blow off your imagination. You can monitor content of any site you specified or read server responses. Web site monitoring service provided by Dotcom-Monitor is different from the other monitoring services providers, who usually use simple ping or HTTP port connection. To satisfy all customers’ requirements and to provide the best quality of web site monitoring service Dotcom-Monitor performs exhaustive and in-depth analysis. Dotcom-monitor gives your opportunity of content monitoring, page source monitoring and scripts monitoring. Besides, there are some unique features as business transactions monitoring, global website monitoring, problem detection and analysis. A great feature of Dotcom-Monitor monitoring service is its flexibility: it is suitable both for professionals and for beginners.

To guarantee 100% quality of service, Dotcom-Monitor has remote self-acting agents which are placed all over the globe. If something goes wrong with your server or doesn’t work properly the notification process starts immediately – you can be informed via e-mail, sms, fax, pager or a phone call.

Dotcom-Monitor also provides web site load stress tests to make your on-line business even more secure.

Dotcom-monitor has been leading company on the market of network monitoring and web site monitoring for the past 10 years. It improves and develops new monitoring technology to achieve the best quality of service.

Functional website testing process emulates user activity, it loads different pages, uses links, fills up and sends forms, gets email, sends files, tries to hack your website. For example there is registration form. We have to check all possible values for all form fields thus we have to try 2-3 variants.

Email (Is it filled?, Does it correspond with pattern?, Is it unique?)

Password (Is it filled?, Does it contain “bad” symbols?)

Login (Is it filled?, Does it contain “bad” symbols?, Is it unique?)

Then we have to check that we got a correct system message. Functional testing is usually carried out by special people and requires a lot of time. There is a way to make this process easier.There are two kinds of functional testing: Browser emulators: httpUnit, JWebUnit, WebTester, SimpleTest Programs which use browser’s API: Watir, Selenium.

When your business grows the load of your website, web applications, server grows too. Besides, usually as time goes by the structure of your web site becomes more and more complicated and branched. So the possibility of any errors and fails increases. There some services and software which are assigned to find, monitor and test such facts as website performing under certain loads, a number of users can handle your website, bottlenecks and so on. Such web load stress test tools simulate real user’s activity by using remote agents. As an end-user you setup the conditions for the web site or web application you would like to stress test.

Such services keep you informed about your website performance, content and availability. Unfortunately local software is unfit for purposes of website monitoring. How can you determine fails of external channel? Can you be sure that website monitoring software is started and works correctly? At last, how can you be sure that your site is available from the outside? External website monitoring is suitable resolution for those who don’t want to lose customers because of fails which are integral part of any project. Monitoring allows you to be sure that your website works correctly and its security is not under the threat. When something happens website monitoring provider informs you by SMS, call and email with details of the fail and possible reasons of it. So, you can take actions immediately and reduce website fail.