When you give a campaign, event or launch its own address, that address can stay printed on packaging, in old emails, on slides and in partners' links after the campaign ends. For the page that ads send traffic to, see landing page monitoring.
What happened to a Heinz campaign domain
Computerworld reported in June 2015 that Heinz had registered a German domain for a competition that ran from 2012 to 2014, then chose not to renew it. A German adult website bought the name. QR codes printed on Heinz bottles still pointed there, and a customer who scanned one landed on adult content.
Germany's .de registry publishes no expiry date, so an expiry warning could not have come for that name. Our read is that the step worth adding was a list of what still pointed at the domain, made before the campaign ended, and a decision on what the domain would do next.
What to watch on a campaign domain
| Check | New site starts | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Uptime | On, every 5 minutes | Whether the microsite answers during the campaign, with the failure reason when it doesn't. |
| SSL certificate | On, every day | The days left on the certificate, with warnings from 30 days out. |
| Domain registration | On, every week | The days left on the registration, with warnings from 30 days out, and an alert when the registrar, the registrant, the nameservers or the status flags change. |
| DNS | Off | A change to the nameservers or to the mail routing. |
| Hosting | Off | A move to a different network or behind a CDN. |
The domain check reads the public registration record of the registered domain, so spring.example.com is checked as example.com and you can watch a domain whose registrar login sits with someone else. Several sites on one domain each send their own warning, so leave the domain check on for one of them. Where a registry publishes no expiry date, no expiry warning can come. See domain expiry monitoring and the guide to client domain expiry alerts.
Uptime and SSL cover the campaign itself. An expired certificate fails the uptime check with a TLS/SSL error, and the alert names it. Send the expiry warnings to the campaign owner and to whoever holds the registrar login, since the person who bought the domain may have moved on. An email rule takes several recipients, and the domain and certificate warnings follow the rule's Site goes down checkbox, so keep it ticked. See SSL certificate monitoring.
Launch day
Schedule a maintenance window for the launch or the domain cutover. A Member can schedule up to 24 hours, and an Admin or Owner up to 7 days. While it runs, the sites it covers send no down alerts or slow-response alerts, and the minutes stay out of uptime. Alerts that report a change or an expiry still send, so with the DNS and hosting checks on, a cutover that changes the nameservers or mail records, or moves the site to a different network or CDN, sends an alert with the old and new values. A site that is still failing when the window ends alerts from its first failing check afterward. See maintenance windows.
Groups for each campaign
Choose Manage Groups on the Websites page, create a group for the campaign and move its sites into it. Group names are unique in the workspace, and deleting a group leaves its sites in place as ungrouped. All members of the workspace still see every group, so a group organizes the list for you. To show a campaign to a client, publish a status page with only its sites, as in the guide to a white-label status page for each client.
After the campaign ends
Decide which of three things happens to the domain, and write the date next to it.
- Keep it. Renew the registration and leave the checks on. The domain warning starts again before each expiry and repeats on every lookup until you renew.
- Redirect it. Point the domain at a live page and keep the check on the old address. The check reports on the page the redirect ends at. If that page works, the old address reads as up, and if the redirect breaks you get the failure reason. A redirect that ends at the wrong page reads as up too.
- Let it go. Do this when nothing printed or linked still uses it. A monitor left on the address shows the failure if the name stops resolving. If someone else's site answers there, uptime reads up, and the hosting check, if it's on, can show a new network behind the address.
OctoPing checks the URLs you enter. It can't see packaging, old emails or a partner's link, so the list of what points at the domain is yours to keep, and the monitor stays on until that list is empty. When the date is firm, select the campaign's sites on the Websites page and choose Disable. One bulk action covers up to 100 sites and stops their checks and alerts. A disabled site still counts toward your plan's sites until an Admin or Owner deletes it, and deleting removes its check history. See workspaces and team. Agencies running campaigns for clients can read monitoring for marketing agencies, and in-house teams monitoring for marketing teams.
Who builds OctoPing
OctoPing is built by Axiolo, which uses it to watch its clients' marketing websites and landing pages. The checks, the client status pages and the monthly summaries are the ones Axiolo relies on for that work.
How it fits the price
A site is one URL, so each microsite counts as a site, and a disabled site counts until it is deleted. Every plan includes all the checks on every site. Plans start at $19 a month for 20 sites. See pricing for the full list.
Every account starts with a 14-day free trial. No card required. Start your 14-day trial and add the microsite you launched most recently to see it working.
Last reviewed
Related
- Use caseLanding page monitoring for live campaignsWatch the exact URL a campaign sends people to, from ads, email, social or print, for downtime, errors, an expiring certificate and a lapsing domain.
- FeatureDomain expiry monitoring and alerts for every client siteGet an alert before a client's domain expires, and when its registrar, name servers or lock flags change. On by default for every site you add.
- FeatureSSL certificate expiry monitoring with early alertsGet an alert before a client's SSL certificate expires, with the days left and the issuer. On by default for every site, with a warning window you set per site.
- FeatureDNS change monitoring for nameserver and MX recordsGet an alert when a domain's nameservers or mail routing change, with the previous and new records side by side.
- FeatureHosting change detection for every site you manageGet an alert when a site moves to a different hosting provider or CDN, with the old and new network named. Address changes inside one network stay quiet.
- GuideGet alerts before a client's domain expiresWatch a client's domain registration from its public record, with no registrar login, and get a warning in time to renew.
- DocsMaintenance windowsSchedule planned work so down alerts are held back and the time stays out of uptime, with the rules for the edges of a window and how it shows on a status page.
- DocsWorkspaces and teamHow a workspace is organized, what each role can do, how invitations and seats work, and how to group and change many sites at once.