Page error detection — HTTP 200 but the page is actually broken

The most common kind of "the site is down" for users is: status code 200, but the page prints PHP Fatal error or a database-connection failure. Plain monitoring only looks at the status code and would miss this fake-healthy state; WebCheck adds page-error detection on every check.

#What it recognizes

PHP Fatal / Warning / Notice printed straight onto the page;
"Database connection failed / query error"-style messages;
Exception pages from Laravel, ThinkPHP, WordPress, Yii, Django, Spring, Tomcat, ASP.NET, Express, Rails and similar frameworks;
Abnormal 200s: default welcome pages / unconfigured-site pages — the "down but no error" cases.

#False-alarm guards

For sites with a must-contain keyword, the keyword is the final arbiter;
On a hit, the error type page_error is recorded and an incident is opened — the detail page keeps a snippet of the raw error (usually pointing right at the file and line).

Description

The raw error is your first-hand clue: start with the database connection and recently changed code. The captured page snapshot is also used for cross-checking — keep sensitive content out of your pages.

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