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Monitoring a website using reference - receive alert when website is down
Date Updated  -  07/22/2007
Description
This example is used by us (Hitek Software) to monitor HitekSoftware.com.  HitekSoftware.com website is hosted by Interland.com.  Normally, our website is up >99.9% of the time.  However, we need to be informed by email to our cell phones when our website is down.  We use AT&T and can receive emails to our cell phones.  Email address is: phone_num@att.mobile.net.  Most cell phone companies now allow users to receive email to their cell phones.  Please see your cell phone manual if this feature is available for your cell phone.

Sometimes the internet connection to our company is down. i.e. our Internet Service Provider is down.  This leads to false alerts being generated by the ping task which monitors our website.  Hence, we use a reference website.  Our ping task is only run if the reference website is up.

The ping task also keeps statistics.  So we check the uptime statistics for HiekSoftware.com from the Logs / TaskLogs menus.  The statistics are updated in a file called 'TaskTitle_statistics".  
Solution
 1) Create a Ping task (http port = 80) which checks if the reference website is up
Host = cnn.com, Port = 80

2) Create a Ping task (http port = 80) which checks if our website is up
Host = hiteksoftware.com, Port = 80

3) Create an Email task which sends email to your cell phone email address.  Make sure that you enter a small message.  Example: 'hiteksoftware.com is down'.  Most cell phones cannot accept email messages greater than ~ 150 characters.

4) Create a chain task.
Step 1 = Ping task (CNN)
   settings: If Exit Code > 0, Go to step 100  (step 100 => stop chain) 
   i.e. stop chain if reference is down => our internet connection is down
Step 2 = Ping task (HitekSoftware)
   settings: If Exit Code = 0, Go to step 100 
   i.e. stop chain and do not send alert email since our website is up
Step 3 = Email task (default settings)

4) We schedule this chain to run every 10 minutes. 
If the hiteksoftware.com website is up, for the ping task, an Exit Code = 0 is returned, and the chain stops (goes to step 100).
If the hiteksoftware.com website is down, an Exit Code = 1 is returned for the ping task (step 2).  In this case the Email task is run, and we receive an email alert to our cell phones.  If we receive 2-3 consecutive alerts (down for 20 minutes) we contact Interland.com and inform them that our website is down.