Three Additional Ways to Maximize Your Website's Uptime

Here at Alertra we've discussed how every minute of downtime can equate to thousands of lost revenue dollars for monetized websites. If your site is monetized (as most sites are), you need to everything you can to ensure that your site stays up and running, achieving maximum possible uptime. We've given some tricks of the trade in the past to help you achieve increased uptime and performance. Here are three things you may have overlooked.

1. Optimize Third-Party JavaScript

If you have third-party JavaScript running on your site, you need to make sure it's optimized. Almost all of today's websites are integrated with third-party content, whether it be social media content, comment features, RSS feeds, chat features, or other content. Make sure that this content loads asynchronously on your site rather than running synchronously. This will help you be sure that the content doesn't cause any blocking behaviour. By running the content asynchronously, you can ensure that when a third-party provider crashes, your site won't go down with it. Your website will continue to load around the failed JavaScript.

2. Keep Things Simple

While we are on the topic of third-party JavaScript providers, let's talk about the simplicity of your site. Every single component that your site contains, whether it's JavaScript, a CSS file or an image, can be a single point of failure. While your site might not come tumbling down just because a small image fails to load, other components of your site do indeed have the potential to cause an outage. For example, a bad CSS file can alter the entire appearance of your web page. The site could, in theory, become useless until the problem is corrected. Because of this, you need to make sure that the loading of your site is as simple and uncomplicated as possible. Limit the complexity of your pages and you'll reduce your risk of website downtime.

3. Upgrade Your DNS Services

We all know that when your DNS goes down, your site goes down with it. Fortunately there are ways to prevent this from happening. Make sure you are using upgraded DNS services with "Anycast" technology. This technology features automatic failover. If a server on the network goes down, the DNS is automatically transferred to other servers on the network. This, in theory, will guarantee 100 percent DNS uptime. While these services tend to cost a bit more than DNS services offered by web hosts, it's definitely worth the investment even if it prevents just ten minutes of downtime. Remember, a small investment of time and money can reap great rewards in the world of uptime. If every moment of downtime costs you money, it's crucial that you avoid that downtime any way possible. The above three tips are great ways to ensure that your site stays up and running and that downtime doesn't become an issue. If your site does go down, even with the above measures in place, Alertra will notify you the moment it happens.