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  H A N D Y    I N F O R M A T I O N    S H E E T    T H I N G  
                                                                
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 PHPSiteMon/1.0.2: checks a page is all-right ----------------- 
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  Contents:
  * The Rationale Behind It
  * What is wrong with other checkers
  * Why are you so good?
  * What do you look for?
  * Na, shut up. You miss so much out.
  * Do you have any tips on avoiding errors?
  * Can I give this to my friends?

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 The Rationale Behind It

  I have a nightmare site. There are many different files
  included into every page, and the functions all have to
  interoperate just perfectly.

  Should a spec ever change, or I clumsily knock something, my
  remote server may be serving up a totally different story to
  what my local test server is.

  Having to check the front page is working correctly every
  single time I upload a file is a nuisance, so an automated
  checker was in need.


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 What is wrong with other checkers

  There are many sites offering to keep an eye on your site.

    http://linkalarm.com/
    http://sitealert.com/
    http://keystone.com/

  However, they are only monitoring your HTTP response for
  variance from a 200 response, or a slow response.

  If a PHP script dies part way through execution, those link
  checkers will still think everything is fine.


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 Why are you so good?

  This was written to detect PHP errors, rather than being just
  a general error detector (which it does have built in).


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 What do you look for?

  There are three things:

    + A closing </html> tag (to show that your page completed
      successfully in the event errors are not shown.)
    + Parse or Fatal errors.
    + Warnings.


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 Na, shut up. You miss so much out.

  Sure I do. Only the first warning or error is included in the
  message text.  However, most scripts only get the chance to
  make one error. One warning is worth checking out too.

  And another thing: watch out you don't get a cached version
  of your page. A way around this is to include a dummy
  argument on the address specified at the start.

    eg:

    $address = 'http://localhost/warning.php3?'. date('mgia');


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 Do you have any tips on avoiding errors?

  No, apart from obviously checking your page manually first.

  But I do have some tips on making those errors less
  noticeable to visitors.

  If you have access to your PHP settings, then change these
  variables to like so:

    error_prepend_string = "<!-- PHP_ERR: "
    error_append_string  = " -->"

  That way, errors will still be included in the page, and
  detected by the checker script, but not visible to the user.

  If you can't get your hands on the settings, change the level
  of error reporting manually.

    eg:

    error_reporting(0);

    http://www.php.net/manual/function.error-reporting.php3

  What that means, is in the event your script commits suicide,
  you'll have to either re-enable error reporting, or sift
  through the error logs which may not be available.

  Should this be the case, add this to your document:

  At the start:

    <?php_track_errors?>

  At the end:

    <?php print "<!-- PHP_MSG: $php_errormsg -->"; ?>

  And then hack the PHPSiteMon script to return that line to
  you. (If you can't be bothered working out how the script
  works, PHPSiteMon/1.1 will support it.)

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 Can I give this to my friends?

  Sure. You must include this text file (phpsitemon.txt) along
  with the warning.php3 and phpsitemon.php3 files.

  Copyright (c) 2000 Stephen Cope 

  This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
  modify it under the terms of the GNU GPL.

  This program is distributed in the hope that it will be
  useful, but without any warranty; without even the implied
  warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular
  purpose. See the GNU General Public License for more details. 

  You should not have received a copy of the license referred
  to here as you probably already have one. If you have not
  got a copy, or have questions about PHPSiteMon licensing,
  please contact kimihia@mindless.com .

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 Who did this?

  Stephen Cope. A person from New Zealand.

    http://surf.to/stephenc

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