News

2008-02-28

Added a HTTP Action. So you can load a URL (e.g. to trigger some action) in the event of a server check failing or coming back up.
Added a DNS Failover action so that RimuHosting customers using the RimuHosting or Zonomi DNS service can change their IP addresses in the event one of the servers is not working correctly.

2006-03-12

The Web Page Check now supports HTTP Basic and Digest authentication. This is useful if you need to check a page that is password protected and pops up a login dialog when you try to access it.

2006-02-24: Multiple Monitoring Locations

Pingability.com will now verify any outage from multiple monitoring locations. This helps ensure we do not send out false alarm alerts. Currently, we are monitoring servers from three data centers: Dallas, Texas; New York city, New York; and Brisbane Australia.

2006-02-22 UI Tweaks

Tweaked the timezone selector UI a bit.
We can now send specially formatted (i.e. short) alert messages to mobile devices (i.e. phones). Just set the correct device type on the appropriate 'Alert Action'
Alert triggers can be added from the alert triggers page (it used to be just from the server checks page).
Fixed a problem when specifying a web check for a url using an IP address (cf. domain name).

2005-12-23 Updates

Fixed a problem where some alerts were going out at intervals other than what was setup in the control panel.
We now capture more information about the IP address used when checking URLs. This can help resolving problems when domain lookups fail.
Added the 'Recent Customer Uptime' tracker to the website header. This tracks the uptime on customer's monitors for the last 1,000 checks we have run (for the curious).

2005-12-20: Outage Email Reports

Pingability can now send out daily/weekly/monthly/on-demand outage report emails. You can adjust when you receive them via your email reporting preferences.
We made a few UI tweaks (though we still will not win any 'pretty web site' awards).

2005-12-16: SSH Commands

We can now setup an SSH command that runs on your server in the event of a problem. This allows you, for example, to restart your web server or database server or even reboot your server.
Alert emails are now in HTML (not text). If anyone still desires the text version, let us know and we can bring it back.

2005-12-10: Phone Alerts

We can now phone you when a server goes down (or comes back up).

2005-12-08: SMS Alerts

Alerts can now be sent out via SMS (as well as email).
Our web pages are now compressed to make the Pingability site load more quickly, especially on slow connections.

2005-11-24: Custom Timezones

Our reports have all reported dates as UTC. You can now set your own timezone and have our reports in your local time.

The free branded web page check can now be performed once every 30 minutes (an increase from the previous once every 60 minutes).

2005-10-19: Moving Out of Beta

In the five months we have been operating the site we have performed a little over 15 million server checks. We have also had some very positive feedback from customers about the service.

We are now moving out of the free beta period into a paid service mode. We still have options for free monitoring, so we believe we can satisfy the needs of most users: from someone who just wants to check their website every now and then, to a business that requires up to the minute availability monitoring and alerting on multiple sites.

Updates:

Since the last site update we have added monitoring plan and payment sections to the site (this ended up being almost as much work as adding the server monitoring code, sigh).
We also fixed a bug that was causing an 'out of memory' error resulting in the site being down occasionally.

2005-07-08: Uptime Reports

You can now get an uptime report for each server check. This lists the aggregate uptime percentage as well as summarising all the uptime and downtime periods.

2005-07-05: Live Status Indicator

Added a 'live' status indicator when setting up a new server check.

2005-07-01: More Checks Added; More Help Diagnosing Problems

Added more check types. We now support DNS server checks, FTP server checks, and TCP port checks.
The check log page now has a 'details' link. If your check failed, then this page will have detail from the check that may help you identify why it failed. The same information is sent out in the alert emails.

2005-06-28: Mail Server Check Added

Added an email server check type.
Minor milestone: we have now performed over one million server checks.

2005-06-14: DNS Checks Service Added

Added a DNS checks service.

2005-05-22: New Site Name, 'Events' Work

The site name changed. Pingability is what we are all about now. We discovered the old name was a little too close to a trademark held by someone else. Better to have to change early in the development process like this than after the official launch!
Added 'Events' pages. These will let you classify any outages. Which will help later on when we add some SLA reporting pages. Events also let you disable alerts during a regular or one-off basis.
Fixed a bug that where the web page checking process was ignoring some server check updates/deletes.
Numerous small web page tweaks.

2005-05-11: User Account-related Changes

Mostly user account related changes:

Sorted out the login (so you end up on the page you intended to be after a login).
Tidied up registration process.
Implemented the email login link.

2005-05-04: Pingability.com Launched

We launched an initial version of the Pingability site. Its rough and minimal. We will be pushing regular updates to it. So expect it to get more polished over time.