How to Setup WordPress Uptime Monitoring?

When a website goes offline too many times, it hurts the credibility of the business. That means potential opportunities lost to the competitors and difficult recovery. Without a proper WordPress uptime monitoring, you may remain unaware of downtime until users raise a ticket.

If the downtime goes on for too long, it will affect conversions and bring potential security vulnerabilities. So a critical part of professional WordPress development services is the uptime monitoring. Experts take care of it using plugins, third-party tools, and CDN.

In this blog, I’ll explain the different ways to set up uptime monitoring on the WordPress website and how it will help. So, let’s get started!

Importance of WordPress Uptime Monitoring

WordPress uptime monitoring safeguards the accessibility and better user experience of your website. Frequent downtime can affect the reputation, revenue, and search visibility. Here’s why you need uptime monitoring:

• Minimizes Downtime and Improves Availability
  Your website is meant to be available to visitors, customers, and potential leads 24/7. Uptime monitoring promptly detects issues and catches them on time, hence eliminating prolonged outages.
• Protects Revenue and Customer Trust
  Every minute of downtime can mean lost sales for a business and irate customers. Online stores, membership sites, and service-based websites want max uptime for revenue generation.
• Boosts SEO and Search Engine Rankings
  Search engines like Google favor web pages that are trustworthy. If your site goes down frequently, it will be deemed unreliable. That will affect your WordPress SEO and the amount of organic traffic it receives. Monitoring tool will give you an idea on taking care of that.
• Provides Instant Alerts for Quick Fixes
  As soon as your website goes offline, uptime monitoring tools alert via email, SMS, or push notification in real time. Thus, you may take quick action to prevent disruption.
• Detects Hosting and Server Issues
  Frequent downtimes may hint to problems with your web host or server performance. Keeping an eye on uptime helps assess if the hosting company has been keeping up with its uptime guarantee.
• Prevents Security Threats and Attacks
  Uptime monitoring helps detect cyberattacks like DDoS attacks or malware infections. They can cause unexpected downtime. Any unusual downtime pattern triggers alerts to assess the extent of potential security threats.

Investing in WordPress uptime monitoring helps keep your website available, secure, and highly efficient.

How to Setup WordPress Uptime Monitoring? (Using WordPress Plugins)

Installing a WordPress plugin can be the trick to taking care of a range of feature integrations and optimizations. So in typical WordPress fashion, there are some plugins that can help set up uptime monitoring.

To install these plugins, go to the WordPress admin dashboard and navigate to the ‘Plugins’ section. Now, click on Add New and search for the relevant plugin. After finding the suitable one, click on ‘Install’ and then ‘Activate’.

1. JetPack

Jetpack constitutes a multi-purpose plug-in that welcomes and incorporates a collection of uptime monitoring; security; and performance enhancement features. It checks your website every five minutes, sends you emails upon downtime or unavailability.

Step 1: After plugin installation, go to Jetpack > Settings > Security and enable ‘Downtime Monitoring’.

Step 2: Fill in your email address to receive alerts if and when your site goes down.

Step 3: Save settings and let Jetpack continue monitoring your site quietly in the background.

Ideal For: Website owners wanting something easy-to-use yet providing security and performance features.

2. WP Umbrella

WP Umbrella is a dedicated uptime monitoring tool designed specifically for WordPress. It provides real-time downtime alerts, performance monitoring, and detailed reports.

Step 1: After installing the plugin, sign up for a WP Umbrella account at the official website.

Step 2: Connect your site by including the API key from your WP Umbrella account.

Step 3: Configure settings of uptime monitoring and choices for alert notices

Step 4: Set email or Slack notifications for downtime alerts for your site.

Step 5: Access reports and logs through the WP Umbrella console.

Ideal For: Web agencies and site owners looking to create advanced uptime and performance monitoring.

3. Server Info

Server configuration further gives you a clear picture of the health of your server in terms of uptime monitoring. It also provides you with a diagnosis of server-related issues that could cause downtime.

Step 1: Once the plugin has been installed, navigate to Settings > Tools > Server Info for the details on the uptime and performance of your server.

Step 2: Set up alerts via third-party services such as UptimeRobot. It will notify you whenever any downtime occurs.

Step 3: Check server logs and uptime statistics from time to time for detection of potential problems.

Ideal For: Developers and site administrators needing deep diagnostics on their server along with uptime monitoring.

Choose the plugin that would work best for you and configure it as per your site requirements. You can also consult with our WordPress development agency for a custom plugin tailored to your site.

How to Set Up WordPress Uptime Monitoring? (Using Third-party Tools)

Third-party uptime monitoring tools usually have advanced monitoring options, immediate notices, and rich reporting. It makes sure that visitors can always access your website. These run outside of WordPress, so they provide much more reliability and flexibility.

Here are 5 of the best third-part tools for the same.

1. Pingdom

Pingdom is a powerful website monitoring tool that tracks uptime, performance, and user experience, providing real-time alerts and detailed reports.

Step 1: Go to Pingdom and sign up for an account.

Step 2: Log in to your dashboard and go to Monitoring > Uptime.

Step 3: Click ‘Add Check’ and paste in the URL of your website.

Step 4: Set the frequency of checks (for example, every 1 or 5 mins).

Step 5: Set up email or SMS alerts on downtime notifications.

Step 6: Do reports and performance monitoring from your pingdom dashboard.

Ideal For: Companies and website owners looking for a comprehensive uptime monitoring tool to measure their performance.

2. Uptrends

Uptrends lets you monitor the website, server, and APIs with real-time alerts. So you can get detailed reports to keep track of uptime and performance levels.

Step 1: Register an account at Uptrends.

Step 2: Log in to the dashboard and click ‘Monitor Setup’.

Step 3: Select ‘Website Monitoring’ and input your website URL.

Step 4: Choose the locations to be checked and how often monitoring will be performed.

Step 5: Set alert notification by email, sms, or through integrations like Slack.

Step 6: Save the settings and start monitoring your site.

Ideal For: Companies and developers who want uptime checks from different locations with customizable alerts.

3. Datadog

Datadog is a cloud-based monitoring and security tool. It provides uptime monitoring, application performance tracking, and infrastructure analysis tools.

Step 1: After signing up on Datadog, log into your dashboard.

Step 2: Go to ‘Synthetic Monitoring’ and select ‘New Uptime Test’.

Step 3: Enter your website URL, and choose the check locations.

Step 4: Set up your alert conditions and notification preferences.

Step 5: Save and activate monitoring, after which you will receive uptime reports.

Ideal For: Developers and enterprises that require in-depth server monitoring, together with uptime tracking.

4. Service Uptime

Service Uptime allows external website and server monitoring, instant downtime alerts, and detailed performance reports.

Step 1: Go to Service Uptime and create an account.

Step 2: Log in and go to ‘Monitor Settings’.

Step 3: Add your website URL for monitoring intervals.

Step 4: Set alert preferences for email or SMS notification.

Step 5: Save your settings and start monitoring your website.

Ideal For: Small business and individuals wanting a simplistic uptime monitoring solution.

5. DownNotifier

DownNotifier is a completely free and easy uptime monitoring service. It can send you alerts through email or SMS concerning the downtime status of a specific site. Here’s how it works:

Step 1: Visit DownNotifier and create an account.

Step 2: Click Add Website Monitor and enter the URL of your website.

Step 3: Set the monitoring frequency (e.g., every 5 or 10 minutes).

Step 4: Enter the email or SMS contact details for notifications during downtimes.

Step 5: Visit the dashboard for reports concerning uptime status and history.

Ideal For: Site administrators who want a straightforward, uncomplicated solution for uptime monitoring that delivers basic alerts.

Third-party uptime monitoring tools like these provide reliable tracking of your WordPress site. Whether you need advanced analytics or simple alerts, choosing the right tool ensures minimal downtime for your website.

How to Set Up WordPress Uptime Monitoring? (Using CDNs)

Content Delivery Networks, or CDNs, offer uptime monitoring by providing insights into website availability. Here are three of the leading CDNs that provide built-in uptime monitoring features. See how you can configure them for your WordPress site.

1. Cloudflare

Cloudflare is one of the most popular CDNs for speed and security. You can also augment uptime by storing and caching content and preventing DDoS attacks. Plus, it has real-time outages monitoring.

Step 1: Sign up at Cloudflare and add your WordPress site.

Step 2: Update your domain’s nameservers to the ones provided by Cloudflare.

Step 3: Visit Analytics > Monitoring on your Cloudflare dashboard.

Step 4: Enable ‘Health Checks’ to monitor uptime from various locations.

Step 5: Set up alerts via email, Slack, or webhook for instant notifications.

Step 6: Review reports from Cloudflare to analyze downtime patterns.

Ideal For: A website owner or a business that seeks a full-service CDN, security, and uptime monitoring.

2. Fastly

Fastly is a next-gen edge cloud platform to deliver rapid content and instant visibility into uptime and performance issues.

Step 1: Create an account at Fastly.

Step 2: Add your website and configure your origin server.

Step 3: Update your DNS settings to point to Fastly’s CDN network.

Step 4: Enable ‘Real-time Logging’ in Fastly’s dashboard for the uptime status.

Step 5: Set up alerts and notification through third-party integrations like Datadog or Slack.

Step 6: Monitor the edge server reports for uptime and performance insights records.

Ideal For: Developers as well as enterprises looking at real-time low latency content delivery monitoring.

3. KeyCDN

KeyCDN is an inexpensive CDN that offers uptime monitoring as well as DDoS protection and content acceleration especially for WordPress sites.

Step 1: Create a KeyCDN account and sign in.

Step 2: Add your WordPress website and configure the pull zone settings.

Step 3: Download, install, and activate the CDN Enabler plugin on your WordPress site.

Step 4: Type in your KeyCDN URL under plugin settings.

Step 5: Then go to KeyCDN Dashboard > Reporting, and enable ‘Uptime Monitoring’.

Step 6: Set up email or webhook alerts if you want to notify you with downtime notifications.

Ideal For: Website owners looking for an affordable yet efficient CDN with uptime monitoring features.

Using a CDN for uptime monitoring ensures your website remains accessible globally with minimal downtime. Cloudflare, Fastly, and KeyCDN each offer particular specialty in their monitoring skills. So you can choose what really fits you best according to your needs.

Do you want help with choosing the best CDN for uptime monitoring? Then connect with our dedicated WordPress development company.

Best Practices to Reduce WordPress Site Downtime

Keeping downtime to a minimum will help retain good user experience, search visibility, and business reputation. There are some best practices that can protect your site from an unexpected crash. Key strategies to reduce WordPress site downtime are as follows.

Choose a Reliable Hosting Provider

Opt for managed WordPress hosting with an emphasis on uptime, along with server monitoring; and automated backups. Providers like Kinsta, WP Engine, and SiteGround offer 99.9% or higher uptime.

Enable Automatic Backups

Regular backups allow your site to be restored within a short time in case of crashes, hacks, or loss of data. Use plugins, such as UpdraftPlus or Jetpack Backup, to perform daily or real-time backups. Keep backups in remote, secure locations such as Google Drive or Amazon S3.

Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

CDN would distribute copies of the website content over a range of servers across the world. That reduces load on the main server. That way, the site can remain online despite excessive traffic or server failure.

Implement a Strong Security Strategy

Keep clean Websites from viruses and random denial-of-service attacks. To keep the WordPress Website safe from threats install security plugins like Wordfence or Sucuri. To secure WordPress websites, use strong passwords, , turn on 2-factor authentication, and keep the firewall working.

Optimize Database Performance

An unoptimized database slows down your website and leads to server crashes. To perform this task, there are innumerable plugins available, like WP-Optimize. Then you can clean your database by removing a lot of junk left in the database. These can include unneeded data, spam comments, post revisions, etc.

These best practices can help reduce WordPress downtime and allow good uptime for the site. Monitoring, optimizing, and securing a website regularly will allow it to perform and remain reliable.

FAQs About Setting Up WordPress Uptime Monitoring

Let’s Summarize

Make sure your site stays online as it’s crucial for user trust, search rankings, and business continuity. Downtime can happen due to server failures, traffic spikes, or plugin conflicts. But uptime monitoring helps catch issues before they grow. There are three reliable ways to monitor uptime:

• Plugins like Jetpack and WP Umbrella are great for WordPress-integrated solutions.
• Third-party tools like Pingdom and Uptrends offer advanced tracking capabilities.
• CDNs like Cloudflare and Fastly can be integrated for performance monitoring.

Each of these solutions provides real-time alerts and insights for quick action whenever downtime occurs. If you are looking to build a WordPress website that is scalable and robust, contact us today!