From AlertFox Website Monitoring
Here is a collection of websites that were officially "up," but did not work properly. With each failure, we include tips on how to detect such problems with the AlertFox Transaction Monitoring iMacros Sensors.
Script Failure
Undetected script error on a website. Use the iMacros ONERROR...CONTINUE=NO command to report such issues with AlertFox.
Video Failure
The video player on the website of a popular German TV station website failed under high load and was down the whole weekend until Monday. Use the iMacros Image Recognition feature to detect issues with Flash Player (and Flash applets in general).
Internal Server Error
Sporadic database problem that does not stop the main site from loading, but renders its functionality useless. Ping based uptime monitoring can not detect this. Use transaction monitoring to have a "real user" (= web browser) fill out a search form and check the returned result.
Paypal Checkout Failure
The website itself and the shopping cart was working. "Only" the paypal checkout component failed due to "not enough space on disk". This issue was detected immediatly by an iMacros check that tests the full shopping transaction, including Paypal checkout.
Sign-Up Page Failure
Here, the website itself was up, but the sign-up page showed a syntax error. This can be detected with an iMacros Sensor that tests the full sign-up transaction.
CSS Failure
Here, the website itself was up, but the formatting is completely wrong. A browser refresh does
not solve the issue (even so the text says otherwise). This issue can be detected with a browser-based test that (a) looks at the website via image recognition (visual search) or (b) a web transaction test. Note that this issue removed the
buy now buttons!.
From the webmaster: "It was a database caching issue because it was easily solved when we cleared the cache on the server."
Third-Party Component does not load
A third-party component fails to load within the 60s time limit. This leaves the page half empty and without comment section.
Third-Party Script Failure
A buggy third-party script fails in IE and brings down all the websites that use it - but only in IE! We recommend monitoring the most important transactions in IE
and Firefox. Worldwide, AlertFox is the only service that offers this option.
