Thanks to the quite brilliant Montastic which Andrew W recommended the other day, I now have a better idea of how often this site is unavailable.

I registered on Montastic sometime during the morning. Late morning I think. Since then I have been notified of  5 periods of unavailability, ranging from 5 minutes to at least 20 minutes. Thats not good is it?  I think I shall leave it a whole day more and present the stats to the hosts and ask what they are going to do about it.

The effect is showing on the hit counter stats as well. I got more visits while I was on holiday and not updating the site! I can't blame the punters for giving up if they keep finding this site unavailable. 

I can't speak highly enough of Montastic, by the way.  I thought there might be some bit of code to put on the site, but all you have to do it register on their website, provide an e-mail address and a website address. Their system tries to access the website every 10 minutes, and if it can't get through it sends an e-mail and continues to try. When it does manage to access the website it sends another e-mail saying it is back. As simple as that.

You can also go onto the website to see the current status, if you are unable to access your e-mail from wherever you are, or you can add extra e-mail addresses to send the messages to (should I add my tech support?) or extra sites to monitor – they don't even have to be your own.

If you want to be more technical you can download a widget to work with the Yahoo! Widget Engine which will sit on your desktop and either stay green or go red.

Anyone who fancies trying it out should set it to monitor this site – you will unfortunately be guaranteed to see it changing status frequently.