The Importance Of Monitoring Your Website
| by Douglas Titchmarsh | December 08, 2005
Are you monitoring your website?You should be, especially if you are using itto make some extra cash, and definitely ifit is your only source of income.
You need to monitor your website to protectit from so many nasties which could affect yourbottom line. Any of the following could bringyour site to a close.
A hack attack. If your website is hacked, it could be used for any number of illegal activities. A hacker could use your hostingaccount to send uce (Spam) from your domainor even add web pages such as user information"phishing" sites. These sites will have a pagewhich looks like a login page for Paypal, Ebayor any bank. If someone fills in the form theirdetails are sent to the hacker who now hasaccess to their account. Your website will beshut down, and you lose money while you sortout the mess.If you have any user information stored onyour websites server, a hacker may alsogain access to that too, and personal informationis a very easy commodity to sell on.
Keep an eye on your site for any unexpected activityor unusual stats showing for pages you didn'tmake yourself. Most accounts have some kind of statistics built in to the control panel soit shouldn't cost too much to monitor visitsand hits, and to which pages they go.Make sure any scripts you use are secure andupdated with any patches to keep the hackersout too.
Hosting or server problems. Your host, or server may have a problem, and lose access to the internet, or crash taking all sites hosted there down with them. This gives you two potential headaches, firstly loss of business while it is offline, but more importantly you may lose data. Making sure you take regular backups of all databases, and all your sites pages will help, also monitoring how often any outages occur, and how long each lasts will tell you whether it's time to change hosts.
No host can guarantee with absolute certainty100% uptime, but some are much more prone todowntime than others. If you have all thesite information backed up, moving hosts isn'tas much of a task as it used to be, and canbe done in quite a short time if needed.As hosting is such a cut throat business,finding a new one is also relatively simple.There are even software programs which willalert you if your site is unavailable.
Blog and Forum spammingWith the all pervasive spread of bloggingit was inevitable that some people wouldresort to spamming them. Forums andmessage boards are also open to abusefrom software which will autopost tothousands of sites in minutes.If your blog is able to accept comments, itis wise to ask for some kind of registrationfrom people who wish to make comments. Ifyou don't ask for registration you leaveyour blog open to blatant advertising doneby software, which will be unlikely to bear any relevance to your blogs subject.This goes for your forums too, allowingguests to post without registration isopen to abuse by widely available softwarewhich autoposts inane comments with a signaturewhich contains a url to the spammers product.
Asking for registration will help ensure that only people committed to posting something relevant get to add their comments or posts. If someone wants to post they willtake the time to register.
It may take a little time, but monitoringyour websites could save you from a lotmore wasted time in the future. Backups of your site will help and shouldbe taken at least weekly, and all yourscripts should at least have security updatesas soon as they are released.
It's your site, make sure it stays in yourcontrol.
You need to monitor your website to protectit from so many nasties which could affect yourbottom line. Any of the following could bringyour site to a close.
A hack attack. If your website is hacked, it could be used for any number of illegal activities. A hacker could use your hostingaccount to send uce (Spam) from your domainor even add web pages such as user information"phishing" sites. These sites will have a pagewhich looks like a login page for Paypal, Ebayor any bank. If someone fills in the form theirdetails are sent to the hacker who now hasaccess to their account. Your website will beshut down, and you lose money while you sortout the mess.If you have any user information stored onyour websites server, a hacker may alsogain access to that too, and personal informationis a very easy commodity to sell on.
Keep an eye on your site for any unexpected activityor unusual stats showing for pages you didn'tmake yourself. Most accounts have some kind of statistics built in to the control panel soit shouldn't cost too much to monitor visitsand hits, and to which pages they go.Make sure any scripts you use are secure andupdated with any patches to keep the hackersout too.
Hosting or server problems. Your host, or server may have a problem, and lose access to the internet, or crash taking all sites hosted there down with them. This gives you two potential headaches, firstly loss of business while it is offline, but more importantly you may lose data. Making sure you take regular backups of all databases, and all your sites pages will help, also monitoring how often any outages occur, and how long each lasts will tell you whether it's time to change hosts.
No host can guarantee with absolute certainty100% uptime, but some are much more prone todowntime than others. If you have all thesite information backed up, moving hosts isn'tas much of a task as it used to be, and canbe done in quite a short time if needed.As hosting is such a cut throat business,finding a new one is also relatively simple.There are even software programs which willalert you if your site is unavailable.
Blog and Forum spammingWith the all pervasive spread of bloggingit was inevitable that some people wouldresort to spamming them. Forums andmessage boards are also open to abusefrom software which will autopost tothousands of sites in minutes.If your blog is able to accept comments, itis wise to ask for some kind of registrationfrom people who wish to make comments. Ifyou don't ask for registration you leaveyour blog open to blatant advertising doneby software, which will be unlikely to bear any relevance to your blogs subject.This goes for your forums too, allowingguests to post without registration isopen to abuse by widely available softwarewhich autoposts inane comments with a signaturewhich contains a url to the spammers product.
Asking for registration will help ensure that only people committed to posting something relevant get to add their comments or posts. If someone wants to post they willtake the time to register.
It may take a little time, but monitoringyour websites could save you from a lotmore wasted time in the future. Backups of your site will help and shouldbe taken at least weekly, and all yourscripts should at least have security updatesas soon as they are released.
It's your site, make sure it stays in yourcontrol.
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