The Web Monitor Configuration form is used to configure the application specific settings that apply for all Web Monitor sites and are used as defaults when new sites are created.

Mail Server
The IP Address or domain name of the Mail server that is used to send email notifications for failure and back up messages. Note that you can specify alternate ports :nPortNumber. If you omit the :nportnumber the default SMTP port 25 is used.

Username and Password
Optional username and password entries if your mail server requires you to login before allowing to send SMTP email. This should be required only if you're not using a local/intranet email server where relaying is prohibited.

Default Sender Email
This is the default name that is displayed as the Sender when sending emails. This value can be overridden in the Email Info Tab for each site.

Default Recipients
One or more email addresses seperated by carriage returns that are notified by failure and back up messages. This value can be overridden in the Email Info Tab for each site.

HTTP Settings

Proxy Server
The optional domain name and port of a proxy server in the format:

proxy.server.com:8080

Required only if you must use a proxy server in order to access HTTP content from your machine.

Proxy Username and Password
The optional Proxy login username and password values if the proxy server requires logins.

Failure Retry
This option allows you to set a failure timeout treshold. This can be used to make sure that a URL has failed before notifying you by telling Web Monitor to retry the URL in a the number of seconds specified. If the first request fails the failure is logged, but no action is taken. Another request is then fired in the number of seconds specified, and only if this request fails again is notification sent.

This option is useful if you get many false negatives for failures. Some sites (especially ASP.NET sites) can often be slow to startup if they have been idle for a long time and the server is busy. The treshold makes sure that you don't get notified of a 'potential' failure but only if the failure can be verfied twice in a row.

Leave this value at 0 if you want to be notified on the first failure.

Logging

Message Log File
Specifies the name of the Error Message Log file. This is the file that is used to log failure and startup events when a site is down or comes back up. You can specify a full path or no path to the file.

Detail Log File
Specifies the name of the file used to every request that is made against all sites. This log is disabled by default because it can grow quite large very quickly. Logging is disabled when the Detail Log File Size is set to 0.

Detail Log File Size
Determines the maximum size of the Detail Log File. If this value is non-zero the log is enabled and written out. The minimum size 100,000 bytes. The recommended minmum though is 1,000,000 bytes as this file will get large quickly. The size here determines when the file is truncated and old entries are cleared out. When the limit is reached the file is truncated in half.

Logging information can be accessed via the Tools | Log Viewer menu option. The log file format is in XML format. Logfile info is always appended to the end of the log file.

Auto Launch when Windows Starts

Web Monitor is capable of running in three different modes:

• Windows Application (No Auto Launch)
  In this mode Web Monitor simply starts as a standalone Windows application that runs on the desktop.

• Windows Application in Taskbar (Auto Launch in Taskbar)
  You can also launch Web Monitor to run as a TrayIcon application which doesn't shutdown but rather parks itself on the Windows taskbar running in the background. You can still activate the Web Monitor UI from this option. To start Web Monitor in Taskbar use the -trayicon command line switch.

• Windows Service (Launch as Windows Service)
  Finally you can set up Web Monitor to automatically start as a Windows Service when Windows starts. No logon is required for this option and the service runs under the SYSTEM context. This mode has no user interface, so you should use the Windows Application to make any configuration changes and the startup operations. Note if the Windows Service is running and you make any changes to the sites you need to stop and start the service, which you can do from the button on this form.

  It's important to note that when you unselect the Windows Service option, the Web Monitor Service is actually uninstalled. To reinstall simply re-select the Launch as Windows Service option.
  

Web Interface
Clicking on this button takes you to the Admin interface that allows configuration of the Web Monitor Web Virtual in IIS. Here you can select a local Web site and the name of the virtual to create to set up the remote Web administration interface to the Web Monitor Service.

Once you've created a virtual directory in this fashion you will be able to access the specified virtual directory and remote administer Web Monitor through the Web interface.

Note:
The remote Web Administration feature is available only in the Service version of West Wind Web Monitor.

See also

Web Monitor Configuration Form | Monitoring Tab | Email Info Tab