Author: RunCloud Team

Are you looking to boost the performance of your PHP applications? Look no further than Relay, the next-generation caching layer for PHP.

Installing Relay on a RunCloud server is a straightforward process that can significantly enhance your application’s efficiency.

In this post, we’ll guide you through the steps needed to get Relay up and running on your RunCloud server. But first, let’s see why using Relay is a smart choice.

Why Use Relay?

Relay is a Redis client for PHP built for enhancing the speed and performance of your web applications. Whether you’re running a cutting-edge app or a legacy codebase, it’s designed to supercharge anything. It’s built to be a drop-in replacement for PHPRedis and Predis – with several notable advantages over it. For example:

• Active Invalidation: Relay actively invalidates its in-memory cache, allowing your application to update its runtime cache mid-request, solving an especially challenging problem in computer science.
• Resource Efficiency: With Relay, you maintain a partial replica of Redis’ data in memory, handling millions of requests per second while minimizing network communication.
• Non-Blocking Calls: Relay’s asynchronous, multi-threaded, and lock-free nature removes the bottleneck of Redis’ single-threaded architecture.
• Scalability: It is designed with shared environments in mind – Relay allows you to set memory limits and automatically evicts keys using LRU and LFU policies.

How to Install Relay on a RunCloud Server

At RunCloud, we use our own spin of Nginx and PHP, so the default installation steps will not work. In this section, we will walk you through the steps of installing Relay.

But before we start, make sure that you have configured SSH access for your server.

1. Identify the PHP version: RunCloud supports multiple PHP versions and you will need to install Relay for each of them separately. But before you do that, you will need to find the path of the PHP version that you want to use.
   For PHP 8.1, the path of the installation would be /RunCloud/Packages/php81rc/ and the configuration location would be /etc/php81rc/php.ini. You can find the exact location of PHP binaries from the RunCloud documentation.
2. Connect to your server with root privileges: To install a PHP module on your server, you will need to log in via SSH with the necessary privileges.
3. Check PHP Modules: The Relay module requires you to install json, igbinary, and msgpack extensions on your server. RunCloud automatically installs them by default, but you can check whether they are installed by executing the following command:

<path to PHP>/bin/php -m | grep -e json -e igbinary -e msgpack

Make sure to replace <path to PHP> with the value that we noted down in step 1. Once you execute the command, you should see a list of all three modules.

4. Download Relay: Once you are sure that all necessary modules are installed, you can go to the releases page and copy the URL for the latest release for your PHP version. In the Operating System drop-down, select the Debian/Ubuntu and copy the URL of the binary for the x86 architecture by right-clicking on the name and selecting Copy Link Address.
   For example, in the following demonstration we selected the binary with the following name relay-v0.7.0-php8.1-debian-x86-64.tar.gz.

5. Next, go back to your SSH terminal and use the wget command to download Relay into an empty directory. For example, here is the command (below) for downloading Relay v0.7 for PHP 8.1. If you want to download a different file, you can replace the URL in the last step with the one that you copied earlier.

mkdir /tmp/relay
cd /tmp/relay
wget https://builds.r2.relay.so/v0.7.0/relay-v0.7.0-php8.1-debian-x86-64.tar.gz

6. Extract the downloaded file: Next, you need to use the tar command to extract the downloaded file. For example:

tar -xvf ./relay-v0.7.0-php8.1-debian-x86-64.tar.gz

In the above command, replace relay-v0.7.0-php8.1-debian-x86-64.tar.gz with the name of your file.

Hint: You can just type relay and press the Tab key on your keyboard to autocomplete the name.

7. Check dependencies: After extracting the archive, change the current working directory with the cd command, and then use the ldd command to check if all the dependencies are met. For example:

cd relay-v0.7.0-php8.1-debian-x86-64
ldd ./relay-pkg.so
sed -i "s/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000/$(cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/uuid)/" ./relay-pkg.so

Make sure to replace the relay-v0.7.0-php8.1-debian-x86-64 with the name of the folder on your server. After you execute the command, it should look something like the following screenshot:

If you see a “not a dynamic executable” error, then the downloaded build doesn’t match the OS/architecture, or your distro is blocking ldd calls in /tmp.

If any dependency says “not found”, the missing library needs to be installed.

8. Locate the PHP extensions Directory: If you don’t see any missing dependencies in the previous step, you can proceed to installing the package. To do this, we simply need to copy the package file into a specific directory. Run the following command to get the path of the directory, making sure to replace the <path to PHP> with the value that we noted down earlier:

<path to PHP>/bin/php-config --extension-dir

9. Copy the Relay package: The output of the previous command gave us the location of the extensions directory. Now we will use the cp command to copy the Relay package to the PHP extensions directory.

sudo cp ./relay-pkg.so <path to folder>/relay.so

Make sure to replace the <path to folder> with the output of step 5. If you perform this step correctly, then you will not see any output.

10. Configure Relay: After copying the package binary, we need to configure some basic settings for the Relay by editing the relay.ini file. Run the following command to append the recommended settings in the configuration file. Alternatively, you can refer to the official documentation and edit the file manually using a text editor such as nano.

echo "relay.maxmemory = 128M
relay.eviction_policy = noeviction
relay.environment = production
relay.key = 1L0O-KF0R-W4RDT0-Y0URR3P-0RTMRBR-OCC0L1" >> relay.ini

11. Set the INI file: Next, we need to copy this file to the INI directory for your PHP version. To do this, we will use the php-config command to find the INI directory and copy the relay.ini file using the cp command. For example:

<path to PHP>/bin/php-config --ini-dir

In the above command, make sure to use the correct path for your PHP installation and note down the output – it should look similar to /etc/php81rc/conf.d.

Next, use the following command to copy the file to the correct location. Don’t forget to replace <path to INI directory> with the values that you noted down in the previous step.

cp ./relay.ini <path to INI directory>

If you perform this step correctly, then you will see no output.

12. Test Relay: Finally, we can check whether it is installed correctly by using the –ri option in PHP command. For example:

<path to PHP>/bin/php --ri relay

The above command should give you a list of all the configuration settings that Relay is using. Your output should look similar to the following screenshot:

Alternatively, you can create an empty web app on your RunCloud server and use the file editor to create a PHP page with the following code to test Relay:

<?php
$relay = new \Relay\Relay(host: '127.0.0.1');
var_dump($relay->ping('Hello World!'));
?>

After adding the PHP code, save and close the editor. When you visit this page in a browser, you should see Hello World!.

That’s it! You have successfully installed Relay on your RunCloud Ubuntu server. If you encounter any issues, feel free to ask for help in the comments below.

After Action Report

In this post we have guided you through the steps of installing Relay for PHP 8.1 on Ubuntu. After successfully installing Relay on your RunCloud server, you can start integrating it with a variety of existing technologies and popular platforms such as Laravel, Symfony, WordPress, Drupal, and Magento.

If you are looking for a better way to manage websites, then you should check out RunCloud.

RunCloud simplifies the complexities of server management, saving you time and automating routine tasks. With RunCloud, you can focus on what truly matters – growing your business and developing exceptional websites.

Don’t let server management hold you back – join RunCloud now and experience the ease of managing websites like never before!

When browsing the internet, nothing is more frustrating than waiting for a website that takes seemingly forever to load.

This situation is exacerbated when the website fails to load entirely.

In this article, we will discuss two common errors – namely DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_BAD_CONFIG and ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT that you might face when browsing the internet.

We will take a look at some of the common troubleshooting steps that you can perform, both as a visitor and the owner of a website.

Let’s get started!

Isolating The Error

When you browse a website on the internet, there are many things that work in tandem to serve you the requested content. You will face a different error if any of these things go wrong. Therefore, it is important to identify what is causing the error.

The quickest and most basic thing you can do first is to confirm that your internet connection is working properly. There are different ways to do this:

• Open A Different Website: Try loading a different website. If none of the websites are loading, then there’s probably something wrong with your connection.
• Try a Different Network: It is a good idea to check the website from multiple networks. This will help you identify any outage caused at your ISP’s end. Moreover, if you use a VPN or Proxy, you can try switching it off temporarily.

If neither of the above solutions work, then the problem was caused at your end. If not, then you can try using a crash monitoring service. If you can open other websites, there are many online services such as Check If Down and Website Down Checker that you can use to check if a particular website is not working. If these tools report that the site is broken, then there’s nothing you can do as a website visitor, as this can only be fixed by the administrator.

Case 1: Website is Down for You

If the crash monitoring service tells you that the website is working for everyone else, then there are several steps you can take to resolve this issue.

Clear Cookies and Cache

A quick and easy fix for fixing this is by clearing the outdated and stale files in your browser. You can do this on most browsers by clicking on the ‘lock’ or ‘tune’ icon in the address bar, and following the instructions.

Turn off VPN and Proxy

If you are using either a VPN or a Proxy server and are facing connectivity issues, then you can try turning it off. VPNs and Proxy servers reroute your internet traffic, which can sometimes affect connectivity. Connecting to the internet directly by turning off the VPN or proxy would allow you to check whether the site is working properly.

Firewall

If you are located in a university or a corporate network, then it is possible that your traffic is being filtered by a firewall. The network administrators in these organizations can block or deny access to certain websites based on some internal policies.

Even if you are not using a corporate firewall, your ISP can still block and monitor your internet traffic to comply with local regulations. For example, the Chinese government blocks a number of popular websites. Unfortunately, there is not much that can be done in this case apart from using a VPN to bypass the firewall.

Update DNS Records

More often than not, ISPs set their own DNS servers as default when configuring your internet connection. However, sometimes these are not reliable and can face outages. If you suspect your DNS isn’t working properly, you can change it to use a more reliable service.

Here is a list of some of the most commonly used servers:

• Cloudflare – 1.1.1.1
• Google – 8.8.8.8
• Quad9 – 9.9.9.9

You use any of these publicly available servers. Just go to your network settings, look for an option to change your DNS server, and then simply replace the existing values.

Reboot Router/PC

If your internet connection is acting up, you can always try restarting your internet router, modem, and switches. Although this sounds simple, this is one of the most effective ways to troubleshoot hard-to-diagnose bugs.

Case 2: Website is Down for Everyone

If the crash monitoring tools tell you that the website is down for everyone, then the website admin can follow the given steps to troubleshoot the issue.

Rebuild Web-app Configuration

If your website is not serving requests properly, you can try re-building and deploying your web application again. With RunCloud you can do this from the dashboard directly.

Just open your web application dashboard and navigate to the Tools menu in the left sidebar. Once there, click on the rebuild web app config button.

Revert Configuration Changes

If you have recently edited your wp-config.php file, added new rules to .htaccess, or configured new Nginx rules, try rolling them back. With RunCloud, you can edit .htaccess and the wp-config files using the File Manager.

The Nginx Config can be found under the Nginx Config menu.

Disable Firewall

Poorly configured firewalls can often cause issues. To fix this type of issue, try relaxing the rules of your firewall a little to troubleshoot the problems. With RunCloud, you can find these settings under the Firewall tab of web application settings.

Revert to Last Working Backup

For ecommerce websites, every minute offline means a loss of revenue. If you want to quickly restore your site then you can always revert to the last working backup of your site.

However, you should keep in mind that any changes made to your site after the backup, but before the crash, will be lost. For example, if a user placed an order just before your site crashed, then that order will be lost.

With RunCloud, creating and restoring backups is as easy as snapping your fingers. The whole thing can be done with just a few clicks. Read our post on How To Properly Back Up Your Website to know more.

Wrapping Up

In this post, we have discussed different issues that can cause DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_BAD_CONFIG and ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT errors. We have outlined different steps that you can take as either a normal user, or as the owner of your website to quickly get to the bottom of the issue.

If you are running a WordPress website, it is always advisable to use staging sites for testing changes, and use an automated monitoring service such as Datadog, Newrelic, or Uptimerobot for tracking downtime.

RunCloud makes managing servers and deploying your websites easier, start using RunCloud today!

If you manage a server using FTP, then it is highly likely that at some point you will have edited a file. In FTP, you would have had to download the file to your computer, edit it, and then upload it back to replace the existing file. Although this works, it is rather tedious.

Do you want to learn a simple and efficient way to modify configuration files, scripts, or web pages on the fly? If so, this article is for you!

You might think that editing files on remote servers is a complicated and fiddly task, but it is actually quite simple and fast with SSH and nano. You don’t need to install any software on your local machine, or transfer files back and forth between your computer and the server. You can just open a terminal, connect to the server, and start editing files with nano.

In this article, you will learn how to use SSH and nano to edit files on remote servers.

But first, let’s understand what Nano is.

What is Nano?

Nano is a command line based text editor. It is pretty similar to other text editors that you might have used in the past with one key difference – you don’t need a graphic user interface to use it.

When editing files on a server, knowing how to use nano will come in handy. You can’t always rely on GUI-based editors, especially if you’re working on a headless server or a low-resource machine. Nano is lightweight, fast, and reliable, and it works well with SSH.

There has always been a tussle in the Linux community to choose the best text editor. Some people swear by Vim, Emacs, Sublime Text, or other editors, and some even argue that the choice of text editor reflects one’s personality and skills. The following XKCD comic clearly illustrates this!

That being said, nano is a good choice for beginners, because it is easy to learn, intuitive to use, and has enough features to get the job done.

But don’t take our word for it. According to a recent survey by StackOverflow, nano is still a very popular text editor among Linux users, with nearly 9% of people regularly using it. That means that thousands of Linux users prefer nano over other editors, and you can join them too!

So, are you ready to learn how to edit files on remote servers with SSH and nano?

Prerequisites

Before you start editing files over SSH using nano, you should have the following:

• Access to a remote server: You need to have a remote server that you can connect to via SSH. You can use any server that supports SSH, such as Linux, Windows, or even macOS. You also need to know the server’s IP address or hostname, the username and password (or SSH key) for logging in, and the port number for SSH (usually 22).
• A terminal emulator: You need to have a terminal emulator on your local machine that can run SSH commands. You can use any terminal emulator that you are comfortable with, such as iTerm, PuTTY, or even the built-in Terminal or Powershell utility.

If you have all the prerequisites, you are ready to edit files over SSH using nano. Let’s get started!

How to Use Nano

In this section, we’ll go through the steps of editing files over SSH using nano. But first, here is a quick refresher on connecting to your remote server using SSH. If you are connecting to a RunCloud server, you can refer to our post on connecting to the server via SSH.

How to connect to a remote server using SSH

To connect to a remote server using SSH, you need to open your terminal emulator and type the following command:

ssh username@hostname -p port

Replace ‘username‘ with your username on the remote server, ‘hostname‘ with the IP address or hostname of the remote server, and ‘port‘ with the port number for SSH (usually 22). For example:

ssh alice@192.168.1.100 -p 22
ssh bob@example.com -p 22

You will then be prompted to enter your password or SSH key passphrase. After that, you should see a welcome message and a command prompt from the remote server.

How to open a file in nano

Once you have logged in to your server, you can start editing files. To open a file in nano, you need to type the following command:

nano filename

Replace ‘filename‘ with the name of the file you want to edit. For example:

nano hello.txt

If the file doesn’t exist, nano will create a new file with that name. If the file does exist, nano will open it and show its contents.

You can edit the file by typing, deleting, or inserting text as you normally would with your keyboard. Nano will show the current line number, column number, and file name at the bottom of the screen.

How to save and exit nano

To save the file, you need to press Ctrl+O. Nano will ask you to confirm the file name and then save the file. Press ‘Enter’ to confirm it.

To exit nano, you need to press Ctrl+X. Nano will ask you if you want to save the file before exiting. You can press Y to save the file, or N to discard the changes.

How to search and replace text in nano

To search for specific text in the file, you need to press Ctrl+W and type the text you want to find. Nano will highlight the first occurrence of that text and move the cursor to it. You can press Ctrl+W again to find the next occurrence, or Alt+W to find the previous occurrence.

To replace text in the file, you need to press Ctrl+\ and type the text you want to replace, and then the text you want to replace it with. Nano will ask you if you want to replace the first occurrence of the text. You can press Y to replace it, N to skip it, A to replace all occurrences, or Ctrl+C to cancel the operation.

How to copy, cut, and paste text in nano

To copy text in the file, you need to mark the beginning of the text by pressing Alt+A and then move the cursor to the end of the text. The marked text will be highlighted. You can then press Alt+6 to copy the text to the clipboard. To cut text in the file, you need to mark the text as described above and then press Ctrl+K to cut the text and store it in the clipboard.

To paste text in the file, you need to move the cursor to the position where you want to insert the text, and then press Ctrl+U to paste the contents of the clipboard.

Undo and Redo in Nano

If you make a mistake when editing a file in nano, then you can undo and redo changes you make to the text. This can be useful if you want to revert a mistake or restore deleted text. To undo the last change, press Alt+U. You can undo multiple changes by pressing Alt+U repeatedly.

If you undo too many times, you can revert the Undo operation by pressing Alt+E. You can redo multiple changes by pressing Alt+E repeatedly.

Note that undo and redo only work for the current session. If you save and exit the file, the undo and redo history will be cleared.

How to enable syntax highlighting in nano

Syntax highlighting is a feature that makes the code more readable by coloring different parts of the code according to their function. Nano supports syntax highlighting for many programming languages, such as C, Python, Java, PHP, etc.

To enable syntax highlighting in nano, you need to use the -Y option when opening the file, and then specifying the name of the language. For example:

nano -Y php wp-config.php

This will open the file wp-config.php with syntax highlighting for PHP.

Other nano commands and shortcuts

Nano has many commands and shortcuts that you can use to perform various actions. You can see a list of the most common commands and shortcuts at the bottom of the screen. The ^ symbol means Ctrl. For example, ^G means Ctrl+G.

Some of the most useful commands and shortcuts are:

• Ctrl+G: Display the help menu
• Ctrl+C: Display the current line and column number
• Ctrl+R: Read a file and insert it into the current file
• Ctrl+Y: Go to the previous page
• Ctrl+V: Go to the next page
• Ctrl+A: Go to the beginning of the current line
• Ctrl+E: Go to the end of the current line
• Ctrl+Z: Suspend nano and return to the shell

You can also use the arrow keys, the Page Up and Page Down keys, and the Home and End keys to move the cursor around the file.

Conclusion

In this article, you’ve learned how to use the nano text editor, a simple and easy-to-use command line text editor for Unix and Linux operating systems. You’ve learned how to open and create files, edit text, search and replace text, cut and paste text, save and exit files, and more. You’ve also learned some of the basic keyboard shortcuts that make editing faster and easier.

But did you know that you don’t need to be a Linux expert to manage your servers?

Do you want to save time and avoid mistakes that could crash your website? Do you want the flexibility of a CLI along with the user-friendliness of a dashboard?

If you answered ‘Yes’, then you need RunCloud!

RunCloud is a cloud server management platform that lets you manage your servers, websites, and applications from a single dashboard. You can easily install, configure, and update your server software, monitor your server’s performance, and secure your server with SSL certificates and firewall rules.

But the best part is – you don’t need to fiddle with the terminal and editors anymore. You can directly edit and change any server settings and configuration files directly from the RunCloud dashboard. You can also use the RunCloud file manager to upload, download, and edit your files with just a few clicks.

RunCloud supports all major cloud providers, such as AWS, Google Cloud, DigitalOcean, Vultr, and more. You can also connect your own servers or VPS to RunCloud and enjoy the same features and benefits.

Start using RunCloud today and see the difference for yourself.

• Do you want to use a privacy-friendly web analytics solution?
• Do you want to learn how to host your own web analytics platform on a cloud server in minutes?

If you answered ‘Yes!’ to either of these questions, then you’re in the right place.

Matomo is a free and open source web analytics platform that gives you insights into your website’s visitors, behavior, and conversions. In this post, we will show you how to host Matomo analytics on a RunCloud server and enjoy the benefits of a fast, secure, and scalable web analytics solution.

Sounds amazing, right?

Well, it is. And the best part is – you can do all this in next to no time. All you need is a RunCloud account, a Matomo account, and a few minutes of your time.

Let’s use those few minutes now to get you up and running!

Step 1: Create An Empty Web Application On RunCloud

The first step is to create an empty web application on RunCloud that will host your Matomo analytics app. Log in to your RunCloud dashboard and click on “Deploy a new web app”, switch to the “Empty Web App” tab, and then create an application with the default settings.

After that, you can configure the web server settings, such as domain name, SSL certificate, PHP version, etc. Once you’ve created your web application, you will see the  dashboard with information about it, such as web root, database, etc.

Step 2: Log In To Your RunCloud Server Via SSH

The next step is to log in to your RunCloud server via SSH and download and extract the Matomo files. You can use any SSH client, such as PuTTY, Terminal, etc. 

Once you log in to your server, you can use the following commands to download and extract the Matomo files:

cd /path/to/your/web/root # to change the directory to your web root
wget https://builds.matomo.org/matomo.zip # to download the Matomo zip file
unzip matomo.zip # to unzip the Matomo zip file
rm ./index.html 'How to install Matomo.html'matomo.zip # to delete the Matomo zip file
mv ./matomo/* . # to move files 

In the above screenshot, we can see that the required files were extracted in the web application folder.

Step 3: Create A Database And A Database User On RunCloud

The third step is to create a database and a database user on RunCloud for your Matomo analytics. You can do this by following these steps:

1. Go to your RunCloud web application dashboard and click on the Database tab.
2. On the ‘User’ tab, click on the “Create Database User “button and enter the database username and password, such as matomo_user and matomo_pass.
3. On the ‘Database’ tab, click on the “Create Database” button and enter the database name, such as matomo and select the user that we just created to grant all privileges to the database user.
4. Click on the “Create Database” button.

Optionally, you might want to set Database collations if you are working with non-ASCII characters.

After creating the database, save these credentials, as we will need them when installing Matomo Analytics.

Step 4: Launch The Matomo Analytics Installation

The final step is to visit your web application and follow the Matomo installation instructions. You can do this by following these steps:

1. Go to your web browser and enter the URL of your web application, such as https://example.com. You can also find this URL in the RunCloud dashboard for the web application that we created in step 1.
2. When you visit this URL for the first time, you will see the Matomo installation wizard that will guide you through the installation process.

3. Matomo needs some PHP functions that are disabled by default on RunCloud for enhanced security. To make sure installation goes smoothly, go to your RunCloud dashboard and enable the shell_exec PHP function. 
4. To do this, just remove the shell_exec, from the given list of disabled functions (see screenshot below). Make sure to remove the trailing comma and then save the configuration file.

5. Now go back to the installation wizard. On the system check screen you should only see green check marks:

6. Click ‘Next’, which will take you to the database page. Here you will need to enter the credentials that you saved earlier. Leave the database server as default, and modify the table prefix to any prefix you want.
7. On the next page, you will need to configure the first website that you want to track using Matomo. Just enter the website name, your website URL, and configure the other settings if you like.

8. Next, you will need to configure your login credentials for the Matomo dashboard. We recommend using a password manager to create a strong and unique password. You will also need to accept both the terms and conditions and the privacy policy of Matomo.
9. Finally, you will then see a confirmation page that will show you the tracking code that you need to add to your website to start tracking your visitors. Copy this code and hit ‘Next’.

That’s it! You have successfully hosted Matomo analytics on a RunCloud server.

You can now log in to your Matomo dashboard and see the analytics data of your website. You can also customize your Matomo settings, such as adding more websites, creating goals, segments, reports, etc.

Step 5: Configure A Cron Job On RunCloud (Optional)

If you have a high traffic website, you may want to configure a cron job on RunCloud to run the Matomo archiving process periodically. This will improve the performance and accuracy of your Matomo reports.

You can do this by following these steps:

1. Go to your RunCloud server dashboard and click on the Cron Job tab.
2. Click on the Create Cron Job button and enter the following information:
   • Job Label: matomo_reports (or any label you want)
   • User: runcloud (or the user that owns your web application)
   • Vendor Binary: Select the PHP version of your web application
   • Command: /path/to/matomo/console core:archive --url=http://example.com > /dev/null (replace example.com with your web application URL and /path/to/matomo with the root path of your application as shown in RunCloud dashboard in step 1)
   • Run In: Every hour (or any frequency you want)

Click on the Create Cron Job button.

After creating the job, it should look something like the screenshot shown above.

Once your cron job is up and running, you can turn off automatic archiving in Matomo. To do this, open your Matomo dashboard and navigate to Settings > System > General Settings > Archiving settings and select ‘No’. Don’t forget to hit ‘Save’ after you’re done.

That’s it! You have successfully configured a cron job on RunCloud to run the Matomo archiving process every hour. You can check the log file to see the output of the cron job, and you can also modify or delete the cron job anytime from the RunCloud dashboard.

Final Thoughts

In this post, we have learned how to host Matomo analytics on a RunCloud server. Matomo is a powerful and flexible web analytics platform that gives you full control over your data and privacy. RunCloud makes it easy and fast to deploy, configure, and manage your web applications.

By using RunCloud with Matomo, you can benefit from the following features:

• Easy installation: You can install Matomo on your RunCloud server in just a few steps, without any technical hassle.
• Automatic backups: You can set up backups on your RunCloud server to protect your Matomo data from any loss or damage.
• Customizable settings: You can customize your application settings, such as adding more URLs, creating firewall rules, deploying SSL certificates, view access logs, etc.

If you are looking for a managed web hosting solution that is easy to install, fast to deploy, and secure to use, then you should try RunCloud. You will be amazed by how much RunCloud simplifies the installation process and enhances the performance of your web applications.

Sign up to RunCloud today and see the difference for yourself! 😊

Whether you’ve previously heard of uptime monitoring or not, it’s something any website owner needs to explore.

Assuming you’re a website owner, you’ll almost certainly have found yourself in a situation where you’ve had to rush to update your site and address a bug that needed to be fixed ASAP.

No matter how much testing you carry out during development, you can’t always foresee every potential problem, and discovering an ominous alert that informs you your website is offline is a sure way to get the heart pumping and the panic rising!

And that’s exactly why uptime monitoring is something to consider very seriously.

Unexpected situations can be easily avoided using automatic website uptime monitoring – a practice that helps to ensure a smooth user experience by routinely checking a website’s performance.

We have previously published several popular articles explaining how to:

• Use Datadog synthetic monitoring to test and optimize your web services
• Monitor RunCloud server using Dynatrace
• Monitor your web app’s RAM & CPU usage with Netdata
• Install & configure New Relic monitoring on RunCloud
• How UptimeRobot can save your website from downtime disasters

In this post, we will discuss the necessity of Uptime Monitoring and also take a look at some popular tools that will help measure your website’s uptime.

Uptime Monitoring: What Is it?

Uptime monitoring is the process of checking your website for downtime, and taking remedial or preventative action if necessary. It is done using software that runs in the background and verifies that your website is operating correctly.

Usually, two kinds of uptime monitoring tools exist – active and passive:

• Passive monitoring uses a third-party tool to determine whether your website is accessible from external networks such as Google or Yahoo for detecting downtime.
• Active monitors ping your server every 30 seconds continuously in search of any indications of a possible outage.

Any downtime can potentially cost you valuable customers, and of course, income. It can seriously impact your brand’s reputation too, which is why it’s critical to keep a close eye on the status of your website to allow you to take speedy action if necessary.

How is Uptime Measured?

The period of time during which a system is operational and free of any major bugs or glitches is called uptime. Any system that functions efficiently and doesn’t require maintenance or administrative support will have a lengthy uptime.

Uptime is expressed as a percentage, often advertised by hosting providers as something like 97.79% uptime. In essence, a 100% uptime indicates that your website was operational 100% of the time, or 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.However, 100% uptime exists only in fantasies; even the biggest of tech companies, such as Cloudflare only ever guarantees 99.999999999% uptime. Realistically, anything in the high 90s range is good enough for most small businesses. 

How Does Uptime Monitoring Work?

When we talk about uptime monitoring, we’re usually talking about active monitoring which works by sending automated HTTP queries to a certain URL on a predetermined frequency – and waiting for the desired result.

Usually, HTTP GET requests are used for this, although it is possible to use other types of HTTP requests for monitoring other features and APIs, depending on the needs of the user. The predefined frequency of these checks can vary from every second for mission critical business services to more than a couple of hours for side projects.

Most tools work by checking the response for a 200 OK HTTP response code. But depending upon your use case, you can configure a test that checks whether a certain page is inaccessible to users, and if so, sends you an error message. Furthermore, it is also possible to configure some uptime monitoring tools to look for a particular keyword or term within the response received.

Why is Uptime Monitoring Important?

According to a study by Google, 53% of users abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load. A website that is accessible at all times translates to increased customer satisfaction and a more optimized user experience.

If a large chunk of your revenue comes from your website, then you clearly need all your website services to always run without fail. For ecommerce sites, downtime means revenue loss. If the site goes down during peak hours, sales will take a massive hit, not to mention the damage to reputation and loss of customer trust.

If you use an uptime monitoring service, you will be instantly notified when your website is unavailable. These tools often provide analytics, allowing you to identify trends in your availability. For example, it is possible that many people visit your website from a specific region on a public holiday, and this causes your server to crash.

Benefits of Uptime Monitoring

Improving your website’s uptime has many benefits, let’s see a few cases in which implementing uptime monitoring on your website can really help you.

Improved Availability and Search Engine Ranking

Even if the downtime doesn’t seem like a big deal, it affects your site rankings with the majority of search engines. Google’s crawlers constantly scan your website to assess its availability, performance, and content. Even the all-powerful Google is aware that occasionally there will be outages, but prolonged or frequent disruption will definitely hurt your SEO ranking.

Website uptime monitoring helps you stay informed about any disruptions to your website. This includes even the minor ones that you might not be aware of otherwise, but that which search engines picked up on. Early detection of outages lets you take swift action to safeguard your page rankings.

Detect Intrusions

You never know when your site might become the target of hackers. Attackers use a variety of techniques including DNS spoofing and DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service). At some point, they might take down your website, divert visitors from it (typically to a malicious website), or take advantage of the interaction between you and your users to insert or extract private data.

Many modern uptime monitoring tools check for changes to the DNS records periodically so that you instantly find out if something shady is going on. Some also monitor certificates, ensuring that you will be notified if a hacker tries to tamper with your SSL certificates.

Builds Trust with Visitors

There is not a single person on Earth who enjoys a website that performs slowly, is unavailable, or just isn’t responsive. Should your website experience any downtime, only some of your most loyal clients will wait for that downtime to be resolved. But in many cases visitors will just flock towards your competition. You won’t see that client again if your rivals provide a better, more dependable experience.

A recent survey found that 9% of users who experience a temporarily downed website won’t visit it again. During quiet periods that might not sound like much, but at peak times, or during special events such as Black Friday that 9% could represent a huge proportion of your income.

Detect SLA Breaches

If you are working with a reputable cloud provider, the chances are that, either knowingly or unknowingly, you have signed a service level agreement. These agreements provide assurance that a particular service will be available without disruption or downtime.

Let’s assume a scenario in which your website goes down in the middle of the night for a couple of hours due to an outage at your cloud provider’s end. Fortunately, all this happened when your clients didn’t need your website so you never even found out about the outage.

If you knew about the outage, you would have found out that your cloud provider is unreliable, and take the necessary steps to avoid this in the future. Moreover, many reputable cloud providers offer money back when they suffer extended outages.

For instance, AWS will not charge you for any Single EC2 Instance that is unavailable for more than six minutes within any one hour. Even if you don’t want to shift cloud providers, getting a generous discount on your bill is always desirable – uptime monitoring makes it easy for you to do that.

What to Look For in an Uptime Monitoring Tool

Most website uptime monitors in the market will verify that services and websites are operational by testing their status and monitoring their uptime. However, some tools go beyond simple uptime tracking and provide more insights and useful stats.

When considering which uptime monitoring tool to opt for, these are the essential features that are a must:

1. Monitoring Frequency: A typical website uptime tracker ideally checks the status of the site every couple of seconds – more frequent checks mean quicker detection of issues.
2. Multi-Location Monitoring: If the tool you choose is equipped with global monitoring locations, you’ll be able to simulate user experiences from various regions. This helps identify regional performance issues related to servers.
3. Alerting Capabilities: Always check for alerting options such as email, SMS, or integrations with incident management tools such as Slack and PagerDuty. Customizable alert thresholds and escalation policies are a bonus.
4. Protocol Support: Make sure that the monitor you choose supports the relevant protocols for your applications. For example, if you are serving your website over both IPv4 and IPv6, you would want a service that can handle both.
5. Content Verification: A good uptime tracker should be able to check specific content such as login forms or key elements of your web pages. This feature is vital for ecommerce stores and web applications.

Top Website Monitoring Tools in 2024

You can keep an eye out for any downtime on your website with a variety of monitoring tools available nowadays. There are options for every scenario – from traffic volume tracking to status checks on your website.

Here are the top 4 uptime monitoring tools we would recommend.

Site24x7

Site24x7 lets you check your site’s availability at intervals as short as 60 seconds using monitoring data from over 110 locations worldwide. Additionally, you can keep an eye on your online apps and APIs. Performance trends over time can also be easily identified by analyzing historical data from this tool.

Key Benefits:

• Synthetic Monitoring and Real User Monitoring (Web)
• 120+ Global Monitoring Locations
• Public and Private Cloud Monitoring with log management

Site24x7 also allows users to check and configure HTTP headers of your requests. You can even perform advanced checks to see whether a word or a phrase is present on a page by searching the response body using regular expression patterns.

Using Site24x7’s browser plugin, you can keep track of important business transactions and verify them by mimicking traffic from several places. You can either manually specify which button to click on each page or import test scripts from Selenium IDE (a common web automation tool) to run on a real browser, such as Firefox or Chrome, on a regular basis.

Pingdom

Pingdom is a popular tool for tracking the performance of websites. In addition to uptime monitoring, it provides useful features such as real user monitoring, page speed monitoring, artificial interaction testing, immediate warning, and root cause analysis.

Key benefits:

• Page speed analysis
• Transaction monitoring
• Detailed comparison of usage metrics

As for alerts, Pingdom provides real-time warnings via email and SMS for uptime monitoring, 24/7. Additionally, they have more than 70 locations from which your website’s performance is examined, allowing you to see how your website is doing across the globe.

UptimeRobot

UptimeRobot combines website, SSL, Ping, Port, Cron job, and Keyword Monitoring all into one solution. Some advanced capabilities include the ability to construct custom HTTP queries with configurable headers, semi-customizable status pages, response times monitors, email-delivered incident updates to subscribers, and maintenance windows.

Key benefits:

• Domain and SSL monitoring
• Cron job monitoring (sometimes called heartbeat monitoring) to monitor tasks, such as wp-cron, that must be performed regularly on a schedule.
• Custom HTTP requests

With UptimeRobot, you can watch your website from several places up to once every 60 seconds for premium plans, and once every five minutes for free. You can get alerts via SMS, RSS, Twitter, email, and push notifications for iPad and iPhone when a website goes offline.

Uptrends

Uptrends provides a range of products such as real user monitoring and synthetic monitoring. With their synthetic monitoring, you can keep an eye on your HTTP(s) endpoints, DNS, security certificates, or any other online services such as SOAP or REST API endpoints using servers from 233 different geographical locations worldwide.

Key benefits:

• Smart alerting and automation features
• Infrastructure Monitoring
• Location-based performance metrics

Uptrends displays all data using interactive charts that allow you to filter by date and time, zoom in on particular features, and examine your stats more closely in order to look for trends in your performance over time.

Furthermore, if there are any speed-related problems with your website, identifying and pinpointing the source becomes easy thanks to their website performance monitoring services.

Wrapping Up

It is evident that ignoring uptime monitoring can have unwanted repercussions for revenue, brand reputation, and user experience. Effective uptime monitoring helps businesses guarantee the dependability and accessibility of their services, which in turn improves customer happiness and boosts revenue.

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