"It hasn't gone down yet" is not a monitoring strategy — it's the absence of one, and the first time it fails is usually discovered from a client's email or a lost sale, hours or days after the fact. Monitoring and backups are the two pieces of infrastructure that only prove their value on the one day something goes wrong, which is exactly why they're worth setting up before that day arrives.
Uptime monitoring checklist
- A monitor is set up hitting the homepage at a regular interval (every 1-5 minutes is typical for free/low-cost tools like UptimeRobot or Better Stack), not a one-time manual check.
- At least one additional monitor checks a key transactional page (checkout, contact form, login) separately — a site can return a 200 on the homepage while a specific critical page or API is broken.
- Alert thresholds are set to avoid false positives from brief network blips, while still catching real outages quickly.
- Alerts are configured to reach a channel that actually gets checked promptly — a phone notification or SMS, not only an email inbox that might not be checked for hours.
Backup checklist
- Backups run automatically on a schedule, not manually and irregularly.
- Backups are stored off-site — a copy stored only on the same server as the live site doesn't survive a server-level failure.
- Backup frequency matches how often content actually changes — daily for an active blog or store, weekly is often reasonable for a mostly-static site.
- A restore has actually been tested at least once — an untested backup is an assumption, not a verified safety net, and restore failures are often only discovered during the actual emergency they were meant to prevent.
Error logging checklist
- Client-side JavaScript errors are captured, not just server errors — a broken script can silently disable a form or interactive element while the page itself loads fine.
- Server-side errors (500s, failed API calls, database connection issues) are logged and surfaced, not just silently returned to the visitor as a generic error page.
- Alert volume is tuned to avoid noise — logging every minor warning at the same priority as a real outage causes real alerts to get lost or ignored over time.
| System | What It Catches | Setup Effort |
|---|---|---|
| Uptime monitor (homepage + key page) | The site or a critical page is completely down | Low — most tools set up in under 10 minutes |
| Automated off-site backups | Data loss from a server failure, bad update, or attack | Low to moderate, depending on hosting platform |
| Client-side error logging | A broken script silently disabling a form or feature | Moderate — needs a logging tool or service integrated into the site |
| Server-side error logging | Backend failures invisible to a simple uptime check | Moderate, usually built into most hosting/backend platforms |
None of this prevents every possible failure, but it changes who finds out first and how fast — a monitored, backed-up site turns an outage into a fast, contained fix; an unmonitored one turns it into a discovery made by a client, at the worst possible moment. This is part of the same broader IT infrastructure foundation that a site needs regardless of what platform it's built on.
FAQ
What's the difference between uptime monitoring and error logging?
Uptime monitoring checks from the outside whether the site is reachable at all — it tells you the site is down. Error logging captures what's happening inside the application (a broken script, a failed API call, a server error) even while the site is technically still up and loading — it tells you something is quietly broken before it becomes a full outage.
- A site can pass every uptime check while a specific form, script, or feature is completely broken — uptime monitoring alone isn't sufficient coverage.
- Both systems together give a much fuller picture than either alone.
How often should website backups run?
Match backup frequency to how often content actually changes — a site updated daily (an active blog, an ecommerce catalog) needs daily backups, while a mostly-static brochure site can reasonably run weekly. The frequency matters less than actually testing a restore at least once; an untested backup is an assumption, not a safety net.
- Off-site storage matters as much as frequency — a backup stored on the same server it's protecting doesn't survive a full server failure.
- A tested restore process is what actually determines whether a backup is useful in a real emergency.