The MonitorSpider blog
Practical guides to website change detection, defacement monitoring, login checks, and uptime — for people who run sites for a living.
Your backup didn't run last night. Would anyone know?
Backups fail silently, by not running. How a dead-man's-switch on every backup job catches failures, dead schedules, and shrinking archives.
Read guideA free SQL Server Express backup script with alerting
One auditable PowerShell script: verified backups, AES-256 archives, off-site upload, retention — and an alert when it breaks or stops running.
Read guideHow to get alerted when a web page changes
Cron jobs and diff scripts break. Here's how content-hash monitoring works, and how to be paged the moment any page on your site is edited.
Read guideWebsite defacement monitoring: a practical guide
Defacements are found by visitors, not owners — usually hours too late. How to detect unauthorized changes to your pages within minutes.
Read guideVisualping alternatives for teams that also need uptime
Visualping watches pages but doesn't monitor uptime or logins. What to look for in an alternative that does both in one plan.
Read guideHow to monitor a login page
A green uptime check doesn't mean anyone can sign in. How to run a synthetic login on a schedule and catch broken auth that still returns 200.
Read guideHow to monitor DNS record changes
A changed DNS record can reroute traffic, break email, or signal a hijack. How to watch your A/MX/NS/TXT records for silent changes.
Read guideHow to monitor FTP and SFTP uptime
Backups and file feeds fail silently when a server won't accept logins. How to check FTP/SFTP actually connects and authenticates.
Read guideMonitor changes, logins, and uptime in one place
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