We’ve all had it happen. We’re surfing the web and find a down site. Maybe the site is overloaded from too much traffic at that moment, but you really want to check out the site as soon as it becomes available again. You might think there’s only one thing to do, obsessively type the URL and keep checking over and over again until the site lets you in.
But…drum roll please…there’s an easier way! You can set yourself up pretty easily with a notification system to eliminate the need to continuously check. Here’s a step-by-step how to: (click on thumbnails for larger images)
First, download Firefox, an absolutely awesome browser with many, many add-ons and extensions to improve the functionality and usefulness. It’s free.
Once you’ve got Firefox up and running, go to Add-ons, and then Extensions, from the Firefox download page. 
Search the site for the Mr Uptime Firefox Extension.
Download it and restart Firefox. You will see Mr Uptime’s face in your browser bar.
Enter the URL of a site you want to monitor into a Google search bar. Click on the Mr. Uptime icon to open up a menu.
Under the “Watch For” menu check “Status change.” Click on the Add Watch button. Now, you can start doing something else and receive an alert when the site is available again!
Going into settings allows you to select either receiving your notification in a new tab or window, or in a dialog box. You can also change the location of the icon, and set other preferences. This tool can also be set to notify you of any text changes on a page by entering in words that the text either should or should not contain. I can think of a few ways this could be useful, such as if you want to know when a certain site is updated without having to check many times. You could enter a day of the week or month in the “should contain” field. Or perhaps you want to make sure a competitor isn’t using a certain copyrighted phrase. Let me know your ideas for uses!
Posted on January 28th, 2008 by Vanessa
Filed under: Search
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