Create your first monitor
What you will accomplish
In about ten minutes, you will create a monitor that regularly visits your website and tells you whether it is reachable. You do not need to write code or understand networking.
By the end, you will know:
- where to see your website’s current condition;
- what the green activity bars mean;
- when Uptime considers a problem real enough to create an incident;
- where to look when a check does not work as expected.
Your first monitor in three steps
Name the service, keep the recommended policy, then confirm the first checks arrive.
Add the address
Use the page your customers rely on.
Use safe defaults
5 minutes, 2 failures, 2 regions.
Check the evidence
Wait for every selected region to report.
Before you begin
Have the full website address ready—for example, https://www.example.com. Use a page that should always be available to customers. Your homepage is a perfectly good first choice.
If your website requires a sign-in, start with a public page such as the homepage or help center. Monitoring a private page may require headers or authentication that are better configured after your first monitor is working.
Step 1: open the monitor setup
Go to Monitors
Sign in to Uptime, choose Monitors from the left navigation, and select New monitor.
Choose HTTP
Select HTTP. This option opens your website the same basic way a web browser does. It is the correct choice for most websites, online stores, dashboards, and public APIs.
Give the monitor a clear name
Use a name that you and your teammates will recognize during an alert, such as Company website, Customer login, or Online store.
Enter the complete address
Paste the address beginning with https://. Check for typing mistakes and make sure the page opens normally in your browser.
Step 2: use the recommended check behavior
The next screen controls how often Uptime checks the page and how long it waits for a reply.
| Setting | Recommended start | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Check interval | 5 minutes | Uptime visits the page every five minutes |
| Timeout | 10 seconds | A visit fails if the site takes longer than ten seconds to reply |
| Method | GET | Uptime requests the normal page content |
| Expected status | 2xx–3xx | Normal pages and redirects count as successful |
| Follow redirects | On | Uptime follows the visitor to the final page |
| SSL check | On | Certificate problems can be detected |
These settings are a calm, practical starting point. If the service is business-critical and you need faster detection, you can change the interval to one minute later.
What is a status code?
A status code is the short result a website sends back. Codes beginning with 2 usually mean the page worked. Codes beginning with 3 usually send the visitor to another page. Codes beginning with 4 or 5 usually indicate a problem.
You do not need to memorize them. The check log translates failed results into readable explanations.
Step 3: choose where checks run
A region is simply a location from which Uptime visits your website. Checking from more than one location helps distinguish a real outage from a temporary internet problem in one place.
For a first public website monitor, select three regions near your customers and use 2 of 3 regions for confirmation. For example:
- US East;
- US West;
- Europe.
This means one location can have a temporary route problem without incorrectly declaring your whole website offline.
You can learn more in Choose a regional strategy, but you do not need to master regional policy to finish this setup.
Step 4: choose when a problem becomes an incident
Use these recommended starting values:
- Failure threshold: 2 — a location must fail twice in a row;
- Confirmation: 2 regions — two locations must agree;
- Recovery threshold: 2 — two successful checks confirm that the service is stable again.
In everyday language: Uptime waits for repeated evidence from more than one place before interrupting your team.
Step 5: review and create
Review the summary before selecting Create monitor. Confirm that the name, website address, and regions are correct. The first checks will be scheduled immediately.
Creating the monitor does not intentionally interrupt or modify your website. Uptime sends a normal read-only request.
Step 6: confirm the first results
Open the new monitor and wait for every selected region to report. Depending on the schedule, this can take a few minutes.
Look for:
- a current state such as Operational;
- recent activity bars;
- a latest-check time;
- a result from each selected region;
- response time measured in milliseconds.
A green result means the page responded according to your settings. A failed result is evidence to inspect—it does not always mean customers experienced an outage.
If the first check fails
Do not immediately raise thresholds or disable the monitor. Open the failed check and read the reason.
| Message | What to check first |
|---|---|
| Could not connect | Confirm the address is public and spelled correctly |
| Timed out | Open the page yourself and check whether ten seconds is reasonable |
| Unexpected status | Check whether the page redirects, requires sign-in, or is returning an error |
| SSL or certificate error | Confirm the certificate is valid for this exact hostname |
| Keyword missing | Use stable page text rather than changing marketing copy |
For a complete decision guide, see Troubleshoot a failed check.
Complete the setup
Your monitor is now collecting useful history. Finish the operational setup when you are ready:
- Visit Dashboard tour to understand the overview.
- Configure who receives notifications.
- Learn how to respond to an incident.
- Add the service to a public status page if customers depend on it.
You can safely stop here and return later. Monitoring continues while you explore the rest of the product.