Without monitoring, nobody would know what is happening with the web server you are on. Is PHP running? Does MySQL need to be restarted? You would be without direction just in case a bad situation popped its ugly head. As you can see server monitoring might be the most important part of the hosting business.

Now with shared hosting, monitoring is a given. Most people have no clue what is going on. They just know their Joomla install isn’t working and they want it fixed. With dedicated hosting though monitoring becomes more important because the web host you go with may or may not “hold you hand” in this regard.

The basic things you need to keep your eyes peeled on are HTTP, FTP, SMTP, POP3. Then you have other services that are second tier to that and you go down the line service by service.

There are services out there that will monitor for you. SiteUptime.com is one service that comes to mind. Another one that I would highly recommend would be Wormly.com. If you remember I had an interview about Wormly with its founder back on podcast 105. Shared, VPS or Dedicated, if you are not sure how, when, where and why your own web host does server monitoring you might want to ask.