I run a couple of web sites. They don’t really need any input from me unless they’re just plain down (in which case, I want to know about it before a client calls me, complaining).
But I hate having to click through each site one by one.
Is there some sort of web app that will let me show a thumbnail of each live site, all at the same time? (Think of those security guards who stare at 16 little TV screens showing different camera views from around the building.)
I don’t think it works exactly the way you want it to, but if you open them each up in their own tab in IE, you can click the far left tab to show you a thumbnail from each one. But that’s not live. What about putting a small RSS feed of some sort on each one, and then setting up an RSS client to get the feed every 10 minuets. If you don’t get the feed, the site is down.
Looks like the foXpose extension for FireFox will do something like you’re wanting.
If you only care whether one of the sites goes down, you could just get some script to loop through a list of URLs, and pop up a message box when one fails (i.e. times out or comes back with an HTTP error.)
I would have to assume that there are such scripts to be found about the net.
Why don’t you program a local HTML file to use frames to show each site and make that your browser’s homepage?
Some places I’ve worked used a program called Big Brother for this sort of network monitoring, and I think there’s a freeware version in addition to the commercial software I’m finding via a web search.
I use nagios, an open source monitoring package. It can be a bit tricky to configure and probably overkill for your needs.
I’ve also written simple perl scripts to pull pages and send text alerts on error. They’ve been quite effective and useful.
You can set up Servers Alive to ping each website (port 80, 443, or any other port you’re using) as well as look for a string of words on a page to ensure it is up, running and serving what it supposed to.
If not, the software will email you.
You can set these checks to once every five minutes (the default) or once a day - or anywhere in between.
Not as pretty and fancy as what you had in mind but quite effective and easy to set up. Runs on a Windows box (and CAN run as a service) and has a straight forward interface.
Servers Alive can create a html page and upload it to a public web server so you can view the status of your checks via the internets. Without this, you would need access to the box running Servers Alive to view the current status.
Nagios (and Cacti) could do this as well, but there is quite a learning curve.
It’s built into Internet Explorer 7. CTRL-Q will display it, or just click on the Quick Tabs tab to the left of the tabs.
You can also set it up to open all the sites whenever you open your browser (though that can be a pain).
Opera will let you tile your tabs. I’m not sure about the live/updating bit.
I’d not recommend nagios, just because the last 2 times I tried to set it up, I found it to be at the impossible end of the difficulty spectrum. 