My day job has me managing many dozens of commercial web sites scattered around the country. That means multiple web servers. That means I need some way to know when a site has changed or a server has gone offline. One of the best apps that checks web site automatically is also free.
Free Noise Maker
Most sites these days stay online between 99.9-percent and 99.99 percent of the time. When something changes on a site, I need to know it right away. My latest Mac special app is Changes Meter. It checks on web site changes.
In my first use, I set it up to monitor changes on sites used by the Mac360 staff. Changes Meter resides in the Mac’s Menubar so it’s easy to see that something has changed.
It can be set to launch on your Mac at login, and perform web site checks every so many minutes. Change sensitivity levels can be changed on a per site basis.
The Menubar display can be a pie chart or bar chart and you control colors and font.
My favorite function is notifications, which include a standard Mac alert sound, or sending a notification to Growl.
I set up Changes Meter to alert me when a site’s home page changes (yellow), otherwise the pie chart is green. Errors, which would show that a site is not reachable, are displayed in red.
The Changes Meter Roster Window displays all the sites on the checklist, and each site can be configured with a different Check Interval and Change Sensitivity level.
It’s an excellent, in expensive way to check site status from your Mac’s Menubar. More expensive apps, such as Dejal Simon, can provide additional alerts, such as email notification.