Website Monitoring

Flowguard includes a powerful website monitoring system that continuously checks your site's health and performance. Get instant insights into your website's uptime, response times, and availability - all from within your WordPress dashboard.

What is Website Monitoring?

Website monitoring is an automated system that regularly checks if your website is online and performing well. Flowguard's monitoring feature runs scheduled health checks and tracks important metrics to help you keep your site running smoothly.

Key Features

🟢 Real-Time Status Monitoring

Flowguard continuously monitors your website's availability and instantly detects when issues occur. The monitoring dashboard shows your current site status at a glance with clear visual indicators:

• Website Up & Running - Your site is accessible and responding normally
• Performance Metrics - Track response times and identify slow periods
• Health Checks - Regular automated checks ensure your site stays online

📊 Comprehensive Statistics

Get detailed insights into your website's performance:

• Uptime Percentage - See how reliably your site has been available over the last 30 days
• Average Response Time - Monitor how quickly your site responds to requests
• Total Checks - Track how many health checks have been performed
• Incident Count - Keep track of any downtime events

📈 Visual Charts & Graphs

Understand your site's performance at a glance with interactive charts:

• Uptime Over Time - Visualize your site's availability with a clean timeline chart
• Response Time Trends - Track performance improvements or degradation
• HTTP Status Codes - See the distribution of server responses

🚨 Downtime Detection

Flowguard automatically detects various types of issues:

• Server Errors - Catches 500 Internal Server Errors and other critical failures
• Client Errors - Detects 404 Not Found errors and permission issues
• Response Time Issues - Identifies when your site is responding slowly
• HTTP Status Monitoring - Tracks all response codes to catch anomalies

📧 Email Notifications

Stay informed when issues occur:

• Instant Alerts - Receive email notifications when your site goes down
• Configurable Notifications - Enable or disable alerts in the settings
• Custom Email Address - Send alerts to any email address
• Smart Throttling - Prevents notification spam during extended outages

⚙️ Flexible Configuration

Customize monitoring to match your needs:

• Check Intervals - Choose how often to check your site (1, 3, 5, 10, 15, 30, or 60 minutes)
• Enable/Disable - Turn monitoring on or off with a single toggle
• On-Demand Checks - Manually trigger a health check anytime
• History Management - Clear monitoring logs when needed

Getting Started

Enabling Monitoring

1. Navigate to Flowguard > Settings in your WordPress admin
2. Click on the Features tab
3. Toggle Enable Monitoring to activate the feature
4. Choose your preferred Check Interval (default: 5 minutes)
5. Click Save Changes

That's it! Flowguard will automatically start monitoring your website.

Viewing Monitoring Data

To access the monitoring dashboard:

1. Go to Flowguard > Monitoring in your WordPress menu
2. View your current site status at the top
3. Review detailed statistics and charts below
4. Check recent incidents (if any) at the bottom

Dashboard Widget

When monitoring is enabled, a compact monitoring widget appears on the Flowguard dashboard showing:

• Current site status
• Key performance metrics
• A mini trend chart
• Quick link to full monitoring view

Understanding the Monitoring Dashboard

Status Banner

The prominent status banner at the top shows your website's current health:

• Green Banner - Site is up and responding normally
• Response Time Badge - Shows how quickly your site responded
• HTTP Status Badge - Displays the server response code
• Last Checked - Timestamp of the most recent check

Statistics Cards

Four key metrics provide a quick overview:

1. Uptime (30 days) - Percentage of time your site was available
2. Avg Response Time - Average server response time in milliseconds
3. Total Checks - Number of health checks performed
4. Incidents - Count of downtime events detected

Charts Section

Interactive charts help you understand trends:

Uptime Over Time

• Shows your site's availability across the selected time range
• Green area indicates uptime, red indicates downtime
• Hover over points to see exact timestamps

Response Time

• Tracks how fast your server responds to requests
• Helps identify performance degradation
• Measured in milliseconds

HTTP Status Codes

• Bar chart showing distribution of server responses
• Quickly spot unusual patterns
• Common codes: 200 (OK), 500 (Server Error), 404 (Not Found)

Time Range Filters

Switch between different time periods to analyze data:

• 1h - Last hour of monitoring data
• 24h - Last 24 hours (default)
• 7d - Last 7 days
• 30d - Last 30 days

Incidents List

The incidents section shows a chronological list of downtime events:

• Incident Duration - How long your site was down
• Start/End Times - When the incident began and resolved
• Error Details - Specific error messages if available
• Ongoing Badge - Highlights active incidents

Configuring Notifications

Setting Up Email Alerts

1. Go to Flowguard > Settings
2. Navigate to the Notifications tab
3. Toggle Enable Monitoring Alerts
4. Enter your Alert Email address
5. Save your settings

Now you'll receive emails whenever your site goes down!

Alert Email Content

Downtime alert emails include:

• Clear subject line indicating site is down
• Timestamp when the issue was detected
• Error details (HTTP status code, error message)
• Direct link to the monitoring dashboard

Check Intervals Explained

Choose how frequently Flowguard checks your site:

Interval	Use Case	Checks per Day
1 minute	Critical sites requiring immediate detection	1,440
3 minutes	High-priority sites	480
5 minutes	Standard monitoring (recommended)	288
10 minutes	Regular monitoring	144
15 minutes	Balanced approach	96
30 minutes	Resource-conscious monitoring	48
60 minutes	Light monitoring	24

Recommended: Start with 5-minute intervals for a good balance between responsiveness and resource usage.

What Gets Monitored

Flowguard's monitoring system performs comprehensive health checks:

HTTP Response Checking

• Makes a request to your site's home URL
• Verifies the server responds successfully
• Measures response time in milliseconds
• Records HTTP status codes

Error Detection

• 5xx Server Errors - Internal server errors, database connection issues
• 4xx Client Errors - Page not found, permission denied
• 3xx Redirects - Excessive redirects, redirect loops
• Timeout Detection - Site taking too long to respond

Performance Monitoring

• Response Time Tracking - Millisecond-accurate measurements
• Trend Analysis - Spot performance degradation over time
• Baseline Comparison - Compare current performance to historical data

Status Changes

• Up → Down - Instant detection when site becomes unavailable
• Down → Up - Automatic recovery detection
• Email Alerts - Notifications sent on status changes

Manual Health Checks

Want to check your site right now? Use the manual check feature:

1. Go to the Monitoring tab
2. Click Check Now in the top right
3. Watch as Flowguard performs an immediate health check
4. Results appear instantly in the dashboard

This is useful for:

• Testing after making changes to your site
• Verifying your site is accessible
• Forcing a check outside the scheduled interval

Clearing History

Need a fresh start? You can clear all monitoring data:

1. Navigate to Flowguard > Monitoring
2. Click Clear History
3. Confirm the action

Note: This permanently deletes all monitoring logs and statistics. Your scheduled checks will continue normally.

Monitoring in Action

Scenario 1: Plugin Update Goes Wrong

You update a WordPress plugin, and it causes a fatal error:

1. Flowguard's next scheduled check detects a 500 error
2. You immediately receive an email alert
3. The monitoring dashboard shows the exact time the error started
4. You can quickly identify and fix the problematic plugin
5. Flowguard confirms the site is back online

Scenario 2: Performance Degradation

Your site starts responding slowly:

1. The response time chart shows an upward trend
2. You investigate and discover a database query issue
3. After optimization, the response time chart shows improvement
4. You can verify the fix was successful

Scenario 3: Scheduled Maintenance

You need to perform server maintenance:

1. Temporarily disable monitoring in the settings
2. Perform your maintenance work
3. Re-enable monitoring when complete
4. Resume normal monitoring without false alerts

Tips & Best Practices

📝 Start Conservative

Begin with a longer check interval (15-30 minutes) and adjust based on your needs. More frequent checks provide faster detection but use more resources.

📧 Use a Dedicated Email

Set up a dedicated email address for monitoring alerts (e.g., alerts@yourdomain.com) to keep notifications organized and ensure they're not missed.

📊 Review Trends Regularly

Check your monitoring dashboard weekly to:

• Identify patterns in downtime or performance issues
• Validate that your hosting is reliable
• Catch gradual performance degradation

🔄 Test Your Monitoring

After setting up monitoring:

1. Temporarily cause an error (e.g., rename a theme file)
2. Wait for the next check interval
3. Verify you receive an email alert
4. Fix the issue and confirm recovery

📈 Use Historical Data

Before making major changes to your site:

• Note your current uptime percentage
• Record average response times
• After changes, compare metrics to validate improvements

Troubleshooting

Not Receiving Email Alerts?

1. Verify monitoring alerts are enabled in Settings > Notifications
2. Check your alert email address is correct
3. Look in your spam/junk folder
4. Test WordPress email functionality with another plugin
5. Contact your hosting provider about email delivery

Charts Showing No Data?

1. Ensure monitoring is enabled in Settings > Features
2. Wait for at least 2-3 check intervals to pass
3. Trigger a manual check using the Check Now button
4. Verify WP-Cron is functioning on your server

Checks Not Running?

1. Confirm monitoring is enabled in settings
2. Check your WordPress WP-Cron is working
3. Review server error logs for PHP errors
4. Try disabling and re-enabling monitoring

Technical Details

How It Works

Flowguard's monitoring uses WordPress's built-in WP-Cron system to schedule regular health checks:

1. Scheduler - Sets up recurring events based on your check interval
2. Checker - Performs HTTP requests to your site's home URL
3. Logger - Records all check results in the database
4. Analyzer - Calculates statistics and detects incidents
5. Notifier - Sends email alerts when needed

Database Storage

Monitoring data is stored in a dedicated database table:

• Efficient indexing for fast queries
• Timestamps for accurate reporting
• Automatic cleanup of old data (optional)

REST API Endpoints

Monitoring integrates with Flowguard's REST API:

• GET /wp-json/flowguard/v1/monitoring/stats - Fetch statistics
• GET /wp-json/flowguard/v1/monitoring/logs - Retrieve check logs
• GET /wp-json/flowguard/v1/monitoring/incidents - List downtime incidents
• POST /wp-json/flowguard/v1/monitoring/check-now - Trigger manual check
• DELETE /wp-json/flowguard/v1/monitoring/logs - Clear history

Privacy & Data

What Gets Stored

Flowguard monitoring stores:

• Timestamp of each check
• HTTP status code received
• Response time in milliseconds
• Error messages (if any)
• Up/down status

What Doesn't Get Stored

• Page content or HTML
• User data or personal information
• Cookies or session data
• Database queries or server logs

All monitoring data stays in your WordPress database and is never sent to external services.

Need More?

The built-in monitoring is perfect for catching server errors, tracking performance, and monitoring availability. It provides real-time insights into your site's health without any external dependencies.

For additional monitoring capabilities, you can integrate Flowguard with external monitoring services through the REST API endpoints.

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Ready to start monitoring? Head to Settings to enable the monitoring feature and configure your check interval!