What should I test if I want to know a website is actually up. I need more than a simple ping reply.

Question

What should I test if I want to know a website is actually up. I need more than a simple ping reply. I want to write a piece of code which would test a website's status and gives me feed-back based on an schedule. I know I can get the ping back. But a ping doesn't actually mean the site loads. Any ideas?

Answer 1

make an http request and analyze the response from the server.