Uptime Monitoring Checklist for Small Websites
Uptime monitoring tells you when your website is down before users, customers or search engines discover the issue. For small websites, a simple monitoring setup is enough to catch downtime, SSL failures and server response problems.
What to monitor
- Homepage availability.
- HTTP status code.
- SSL certificate status.
- Response time.
- Important landing pages.
- Admin login page if appropriate.
Checklist
- Choose an uptime monitoring tool.
- Add the homepage URL.
- Set check interval.
- Enable email, Telegram or app alerts.
- Add HTTPS version of the website.
- Monitor SSL expiration if available.
- Add important landing pages.
- Create an incident note template.
- Test alert delivery.
- Review downtime history weekly.
Final check
Monitoring is useful only when alerts reach you quickly and you know what to check after receiving a downtime warning.
When to Use This Checklist
Use this checklist when setting up basic uptime monitoring for a WordPress site, VPS website or small business website.
Required Tools
Uptime monitoring tool, website URL, alert email, Telegram or app notification, SSL-enabled domain
Before You Start
Decide who receives alerts and what the first response should be when downtime is detected.
Structured Checklist Steps
- Select monitoring tool.
- Add homepage URL.
- Set check interval.
- Enable alerts.
- Add HTTPS URL.
- Enable SSL monitoring.
- Add key pages.
- Test alert delivery.
- Create response checklist.
- Review downtime reports.
Verification Steps
- Test alert is received.
- Homepage status is monitored.
- SSL status is visible.
- Downtime history is recorded.
- Response process is documented.
Rollback Plan
If alerts are too noisy, adjust check interval or monitored URLs, but do not turn off monitoring completely.
Common Mistakes
- Monitoring only the homepage.
- No alert recipient.
- Ignoring SSL expiration.
- Never testing alerts.
- No action plan after alert.
Related Commands
curl -I https://example.com
curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}
" https://example.com
openssl s_client -connect example.com:443 -servername example.com