Monitor Your Side Project in 5 Minutes

#beginners #webdev #tutorial #productivity

Monitor Your Side Project in 5 Minutes

Your side project is finally live. You shipped it. You're proud of it. But here's an uncomfortable question: how will you know when it goes down?

The answer, unfortunately, is usually "when an angry user tweets at me" or "when I notice it 3 days later." I've been there. It sucks.

I built Boop specifically because I got tired of finding out my projects were down from someone else. Now I'm going to show you how to set up monitoring in literally 5 minutes.

Why Bother Monitoring a Side Project?

Look, I get it. It's a side project. You're not running AWS here. But consider:

Users won't tell you - Most will just leave and never come back
Search engines notice - Downtime can tank your SEO
SSL certificates expire - And you'll forget until Chrome shows that scary warning
It takes 5 minutes - And Boop has a free tier, so there's zero excuse

The 5-Minute Setup

Step 1: Sign Up (30 seconds)

Head to boop.one and create an account. No credit card required for the free tier.

Step 2: Add Your First Monitor (1 minute)

Click "Add Monitor" and enter your URL. That's it. Boop will automatically:

Check if your site is up every 30 seconds
Monitor from 4 global regions (US East, US West, Europe, Asia)
Track response times
Check your SSL certificate expiration

Step 3: Set Up Alerts (2 minutes)

This is the important part. Go to Settings and connect your preferred notification channel:

Email - Classic, always works
Slack - Great if you live in Slack
Discord - Perfect for indie hackers
Webhooks - For the automation nerds

I personally use Discord because I have a private server for all my project notifications.

Step 4: (Optional) Create a Status Page (1 minute)

Want to look professional? Create a public status page for your users. It takes one click and you get a URL like status.yourproject.com that shows real-time uptime.

What You Get

With just those 5 minutes, you now have:

30-second checks from 4 continents
Instant alerts when something breaks
SSL expiry warnings before they become emergencies
Response time tracking to catch slowdowns
A status page to show users (and yourself) that you're serious

The Peace of Mind Factor

Here's what I didn't expect: the mental relief.

Before I had monitoring, there was always this low-grade anxiety. "Is my project up? Should I check? When was the last time I checked?"

Now I just... don't think about it. If something's wrong, I'll know within 30 seconds. If I don't get an alert, everything's fine. It's genuinely freeing.