Site settings

Customise how DomainDash checks each of your sites.

Overview

Every site you add to DomainDash comes with sensible defaults. When you want to change how DomainDash checks a site, its settings are organised into tabs, each covering a different aspect.

Getting to site settings

To reach settings for a specific site, open the site detail page, click the three-dot menu in the toolbar and select Settings.

Once you're in settings, the breadcrumb at the top links back to the site and your list of sites.

Settings tabs

Site settings are split across two tabs: General and Uptime. Each tab has its own save button, so you can update one area without affecting the others.

General

The General tab has two cards. About this site shows the site's domain. What we check controls which types of check DomainDash runs for this site, with a switch for each:

Check	What it does
Uptime and speed	Checks whether your site is online and loading quickly
Security certificate	Warns you before your SSL certificate expires
Domain routing	Checks that visitors can find your site
Domain registration	Warns you before your domain name expires

The switches are independent: if you turn off uptime checks, the other check types keep running. To stop everything at once, use the Pause checks option from the site detail page's three-dot menu instead.

Pausing vs. turning off

Pausing (from the site menu) switches off every check in one go and shows the site as "Paused" on your dashboard. Turning off individual checks here lets you keep some running while disabling others. This is useful if, for example, you manage DNS elsewhere and don't need DomainDash to check it.

Uptime

The Uptime tab controls how, where, and how often DomainDash checks your site's availability. It has three cards: What to check (Path, Expected response, HTTP method, and Frequency), Content check, and Where to check from (Primary and Secondary).

Path

By default, DomainDash checks your homepage (/). If you have a dedicated health check endpoint or a specific page you care about, set the path here. The full URL is previewed below the input so you can double-check it.

Expected response

Expected response defaults to 200. With 200 selected, any 2xx or 3xx response counts as healthy. DomainDash doesn't follow redirects, so if the page you're checking redirects (like a login page that sends you somewhere else), the redirect response itself counts as healthy.

If you choose a different code, for example 301, the response must match it exactly. Anything else shows the site as Down.

HTTP method

DomainDash checks your site with a GET request. This is the only method available right now.

Frequency

Choose how often DomainDash checks your site: every 1, 5, 10 or 15 minutes, within your plan's limit. More frequent checks mean you hear about a problem sooner, and less frequent checks are fine for sites that don't change often.

The Free plan checks every 5 minutes at best. Starter, Pro and Business can check as often as every minute. See Plans and pricing for the full comparison.

Content check

Plan availability

Content checks is available on Pro and Business. See the plan comparison.

A 200 OK response doesn't always mean the page is right. A content check confirms the page contains what it should. You can check that the page contains a piece of text, that an element matching a CSS selector is present, or that the JSON response contains certain keys and values. DomainDash checks the HTML your server returns, before any JavaScript runs, and the page content never leaves the checker. A failed content check shows the site as Down.

If your plan doesn't include content checks, this card shows a link to view plans instead. See Content checks for the full detail.

Check locations

Under Where to check from, pick where DomainDash checks your site from:

• Primary should be the location closest to most of your visitors. It defaults to the one nearest you.
• Secondary is a second place to check from, for comparison. If your site is slower from one location, you'll see it on the response time chart.

The Free plan has one location per site. Starter, Pro and Business have two. Starter alternates between the two, while Pro and Business check from both every time.

DomainDash adds the second location automatically only when you create a site on a plan with two locations (the nearest one to the primary, unless you pick one). A site you added on the Free plan, or one that was trimmed back to its primary location by a downgrade or the trial ending, doesn't gain one when you upgrade. Add it yourself in the Secondary field. See Check locations for more on how checking from more than one place works.

How often the other checks run

You choose how often DomainDash runs your uptime checks on the Uptime tab. The other three checks (SSL certificate, DNS routing, and domain registration) change much more slowly, so their frequency is set by your plan rather than per site:

• SSL certificates are checked daily on Free, every 12 hours on Starter and Pro, and every 6 hours on Business.
• DNS records are checked daily on Free, every 12 hours on Starter, and every 6 hours on Pro and Business.
• Domain registration (the public WHOIS record of who owns a domain) changes least often of all, so it's checked daily, or every 12 hours on Business.

You can still turn any of these checks on or off on the General tab; that's separate from how often they run.

Related

• Check locations for how checking from more than one place works
• Content checks for confirming a page contains what it should
• Notification channels to choose how you're alerted when something goes wrong
• Site detail page to see the impact of your settings on your site's overview