“Monitoring of sites” from REG.RU: how the beta test helped to improve the service and what I want to say thank you to the masters

Most recently, we wrote about the launch of the open beta test of the REG.RU service “Monitoring of the website operation” . Just a few days ago, testing was completed, and now the complete updated version of the product has become available to everyone.

During the beta test, we tried to collect as many user reviews as possible so that in the end our service would meet all their needs as much as possible. An important role was played here by habravchane who actively participated in the discussion of the technological capabilities of the system.

What changed?
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• Fixed the problem of failure to search for a string on the site if this string is enclosed in link tags in html;

• Added monitor "Position tracking in search engines":



During the testing process, a problem arose with the fact that the Yandex bot began to ban us, so the REG.RU developers had to apply some software solutions and reconfigure the servers.
Check in the search engines daily and is built on the queue of tasks. So far 3 systems (Yandex.ru, Mail.ru, Google.ru) and one keyword per monitor are available. In addition, in the Yandex search system, among other things, you can select the region of verification.

• Standard server checks and monitoring included:
In the process of adding new servers for verification, the question arose of how to include them in our system for continuous monitoring.
Our developers have added them to the general pool of REG.RU servers with specific nagios settings, which are ideal in this case. Now administrators will be able to receive notifications in a timely manner and at any time restore the operability of servers.

• Minimum check interval - once per minute:
Previously, the results of monitor requests were sent no more than once per hour, which did not suit many users. Now results can be obtained once a minute.
However, this was not immediately possible. In the case when the number of monitoring points exceeded some values, the system simply did not have time to process such a large number of requests, so our developers had to refine the code in several places. They coped with this task successfully.

• Error code (for example, 403, 500) is sent by mail and SMS , which allows you to quickly navigate when analyzing a problem;

• Data was added to the report to analyze the dynamics of site degradation:
You can analyze the dynamics of site degradation based on data about the time of receiving a response from the server and about its gradual increase. In addition, an important factor in this case is the presence of recurring errors 500.


Schedule change the response time from the server.


If the server stops responding.

As a rule, these indicators indicate the presence of problems with scripts or technical problems on the part of the hoster. By informing the hosting provider of the site the exact time of the error, the user can significantly reduce the time to solve the problem.
It is worth noting that REG.RU continues to work actively in this direction and, perhaps, very soon we will be able to complement the Site Monitoring service with a more complete and detailed analysis of the dynamics of site degradation.

• Setting SMS notifications and connecting SMS notification packages:
Now everyone can connect the function of sending SMS notifications containing information about the site status, while each user is provided with 50 free SMS messages per month.
It was decided to dwell on this figure after the analysis, which showed that on average 5 user sites per month there are, on average, 50 critical performance problems (failures and recoveries). However, due to the fact that the system allows you to purchase more than 5 monitors, it was decided to provide users with the ability to connect a package of additional SMS notifications.
Packages are purchased and replenished in real time.

• It was possible to add several e-mail addresses for sending notifications at once, which allows you to “keep abreast” not only of the resource administrator, but also of programmers, managers, and other specialists.

What else to say?

• We decided to dwell on the concept of monitors, abandoning the usual streaming reports, since, in our opinion, this format is the most convenient.

• It is not yet possible to use other test methods (for example, PING, SSH, FTP) , because if the site’s operation is confirmed by one method, then the results of the test conducted by another method will almost certainly be the same.

What will happen next?

Despite the fact that the commercial version of the service has already been launched, we plan to further develop the technological capabilities of Site Monitoring and are still open to comments and suggestions from users.

We hope that this time the habravchane will not stand aside and take an active part in the discussion. By the way, the authors of the first 200 comments on the updated functionality of the service under this post will receive 3 months of free use of the Site Monitoring service from REG.RU;)