Mr Uptime

How does it work?

Have you ever tried accessing a website and it didn’t respond? Of course you have. We all have!

Mr Uptime is an extension to your Firefox browser that will keep trying to reach that website in the background while you continue surfing on other websites. When the website is accessible again, Mr Uptime will let you know. You can also use Mr Uptime when a website responds but doesn’t load correctly.

1. Why use it
2. When to use it
3. Screenshots
4. Screencast

The website you want to visit doesn’t work

Add it to Mr Uptime's watchlist with just one click

Mr Uptime will notify you when it starts working again

Mr Uptime can be used for practically any kind of website error that you may stumble upon on the Internet. These are just a few of the situations where you can choose (with just a click) to monitor a page and get alerted when it is working normally again.

Temporary maintenance pages

404 and other HTTP server errors

Server-side scripting errors

Pages where not all elements load correctly

Database errors

Too many server connections

See Mr Uptime in action in the images below and also how you can use the different settings available. (Click on the pictures to enlarge them.)

The Watchlist

General settings

Interactive toolbar

Features

Status change
Watch when the server status code changes from an error to OK (HTTP status code 200).
Keywords
Set a keyword that the website should or should not contain to be considered ok.
Time to watch
Set how long you want to keep checking a website. After this time it will be removed from the watchlist even if it hasn’t become available.
Notifications
Choose to open the website in a new tab or a new window when it becomes available. You can also optionally get an alert dialog box to notify you when a website is working again.
Easy to use and discreet
The interface will not clutter your Firefox window. The toolbar is only shown when an error is encountered or when you choose to open it yourself. You will not get another toolbar taking up valuable space in Firefox.

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FAQ

Below are the answers to some of the more frequently asked questions about Mr Uptime.

Q: Why do I need Mr Uptime?

A: On a daily basis millions of Internet users encounter websites that don’t work as intended. In most cases you as a user just want to visit a website to get information but can’t because of various kinds of issues. It could be a problem on your end, with the website, or somewhere in between. Mr Uptime will help you by informing you when the website is working correctly for you again.

Q: Is it hard to add a website to be watched?

A: No. It’s only one mouse click away. You can also add websites where the web server gives an OK status code but the site still isn’t working because of for example a database error. You can do this by marking a keyword on the page that shouldn’t be there (i.e. an error message). Mr Uptime will then tell you when the keyword (the error) isn’t on the page anymore.

Q: Does Mr Uptime consume lots of bandwidth?

A: No. Mr Uptime uses less bandwidth than a regular visit to a website since it either just checks the web server response or if a string exists or not on the page. It doesn’t load any images, etc.

Q: Can anyone else see which sites I am watching or have watched historically?

A: No, all information is stored inside your web browser where only you have access to it. The information is not sent to anyone else, including us. There is also a setting inside Mr Uptime where you can choose to erase all your data when Firefox is closed.

Q: How often does Mr Uptime check the websites?

A: Every 5 minutes for the first 60 minutes. Every 10 minutes for the next 120 minutes. Every 15 minutes for the next 180 minutes. Every 30 minutes for the next 240 minutes. Every 60 minutes after that.

Q: Ok, I’ve added a website to my watchlist. Now what?

A: You can just keep browsing the web without paying any further attention to Mr Uptime. There are no restrictions (like closing existing tabs), but if you shut down Firefox the monitoring stops until you start Firefox again. This is because Mr Uptime monitors from your Firefox session on your local computer.

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About Mr Uptime

Mr Uptime was created by the website and server monitoring company Pingdom as a free service to all Firefox users.

Why was Mr Uptime Created?

The idea for Mr Uptime came to us when we surfed around on news and social media sites that linked to articles that where unavailable due to the high amounts of traffic they received, popularly called the Digg or Slashdot effect.

We realized that a lot of people were missing out on interesting content because of this, so we decided to create an easy way for web surfers to find out when a problematic website was working again. And what better way than having your browser do this for you in the background so you can focus your attention on other things in the meantime?

Why Mr Uptime makes sense

370+ million Firefox downloads
The reason for building it as a Firefox extension is that Firefox is the fastest growing browser at the moment. The fact that it’s also incredible flexible with it’s extensions just makes it perfect for Mr Uptime.
52 million active websites on the Internet
According to the company Netcraft there are currently 52 million active websites on the Internet. You just possibly can’t keep track of these and remember if you missed an interesting website because it was down.
12,000 years of website downtime per month
According to a survey by Pingdom these 52 million websites has about 12,000 years of downtime each month. The survey was based on 2,000 websites in different categories where the conclusion is that the average website downtime per month is two hours.