Automatic monitoring of Laravel Forge managed sites
We've launched a cool feature for our users on the Laravel Forge platform: automatic monitoring of any of your sites and servers managed through Laravel Forge!
How the automatic monitoring works
Forge recently introduced a feature called tags, which allows you to add custom tags to any server or site in Forge.
We use those tags to determine which sites we should automatically add to your Oh Dear! Account. Every site or server tagged with oh-dear will be added. This allows you to still pick which sites should - or should not - get monitored.
There are 2 ways you can use these tags right now:
- Add a tag to a server
- Add a tag to a site
If you add a tag to a server, we will automatically monitor every site that gets added to it. This is convenient for users that have multiple sites on a single server.
Alternatively, if you want more fine grained control over the monitoring, you can add the tags to an individual site too, instead of on the server. We'll only import those sites that have the tag.
Add your Forge API token to Oh Dear!
To get started, you can add a Laravel Forge API token in your Oh Dear! dashboard.
In the same settings page, you can decide which checks we should automatically enable for newly found sites. This applies to the sites that will be imported straight away, as well as the ones we will add later on as you add more sites to Forge.
When we import a website, we will assume it'll be https enabled. Hey, it's 2018 after all. If it's an http-only site, you can add an explicit extra tag called oh-dear-http to force the use of HTTP instead.
You can find more information on how this works on our Forge import documentation.
Get notified when we automatically add a site from Forge
If your team is growing, it'll become important to know which sites got added to Oh Dear! and which didn't. To facilitate this, we add a new event to our notifications system that you can configure.
There's now a "Site added to account" event. This can be sent to any of our notifications channels (Slack, Email, Discord, ...). It will fire whenever a website gets added to your account, either from the Laravel Forge import, through our API or the Oh Dear! dashboard.
This way, your team will automatically be aware that a new site has been added to your account which might trigger alerts.
Through our webhooks, you can also pass on this information to any other service you may be running.
Save some bucks on Forge and Oh Dear!
The creator of Forge, Taylor Otwell, was kind enough to provide us with a sign-up link for Forge that will give you a discount of 25% on the first bill you'll get from Forge. You can find the sign-up link on our Forge Import settings screen. Hurry up, because that link is only valid until 16 november 2018.
If you don't have an Oh Dear account yet to view that Forge coupon code, register here. The first 10 days are free, no questions (or creditcards) asked. If you decide to subscribe to Oh Dear! you can use this coupon code to get 25% discount on the first bill you'll get from us: OH-DEAR-LOVES-FORGE This coupon code is also only valid until 16 november 2018.
Oh Dear! ❤️ Laravel Forge
Most of our servers are provisioned through Laravel Forge, as well as the sites that run on them. It is an amazingly powerful tool that benefits the entire Laravel community.
We are greatful for both the API and Tags support that recently got added to Forge, allowing the development of this feature.
The best kind of monitoring is the one you don't have to think about, this is another step in that direction.
