How to configure the Laravel Forge Import

Laravel Forge is a service that makes it very easy to provision servers on DigitalOcean, Linode and a couple of other hosting providers. In fact, Oh Dear itself is running on Forge provisioned servers.

In Forge, you have the ability to tag both servers and sites. Oh Dear can automatically monitor all sites that have an oh-dear tag. If we find a server on your Forge account with an oh-dear tag, we will start monitoring all the sites on that server.

To get started with automatic import of Forge sites, head over the the Forge Import screen in the settings of your team. This is how that screen looks like:

In order for us to automatically monitor your sites, you'll need to specify a Forge API token. You can create a token on the new API token screen at Forge. You can also choose which checks should be added for the sites that get added automatically.

Finding sites

As soon as you save the token we'll starting looking for servers and sites with an oh-dear (or ohdear) tag. We'll check your Forge account every 5 minutes for newly added sites and servers. We are going to assume that the name of your site contains a valid hostname. A site with a name like example.com will be added, a site named example will not.

By default we'll also assume that your site uses https. So a site named example.com will be imported as https://example.com. If your site runs only on http you can let us know by adding an extra tag oh-dear-http (or http-ohdear) to the site.

What happens if something goes wrong?

Should your Oh Dear subscripton not allow more sites to be added, or should your Forge token become invalid, we'll automatically disable the Forge integration and send the owner of the Oh Dear account an email with instructions on how to upgrade the account and how to re-enable the automatic import.

Get notified when a new site is added

You can be automatically notified when a new site is added to Oh Dear. You can configure this in your notifications settings. This allows you to enable email, Slack or any other medium to receive a message when a new site is added.