As part of my job role I have to monitor and maintain VPN connections on several sites across the UK. This relies on many third party systems and networks, each of which have their own status pages. However non have their own RSS feeds.. This generally leads to a scramble around for links for status pages when we lose connection to a site.. That was until I read a recent blog post from Richard Tubb’s blog.
The post featured a service called VisualPing which I’ve now set up to monitor and notify me of changes to the status pages. VisualPing takes a ‘screenshot’ at a specified interval, and compares it to the preview screenshot taken. If there’s been any changes it then notifies you via email.
So now, I get the status delivered to my inbox – leaving me to get on with more important things such as speaking to the branch to explain the issue.
I’ve used VisualPing to monitor service status pages, but as Richard’s pointed out in his post, you can use it to monitor any web page for changes!
Thanks for Richard for this time saver..
Have you found a unique way to use VisualPing? Let me know in the comments section below.
