Whether you're Interested In viewing the latest updates on your favorite website, or you have one of your own and want to keep an eye out for unauthorized changes, It's difficult to physically sift through every detail on the web page In question. Wouldn't It be great, If you had a tool that can do the job for you? Well, In this tutorial, I will Introduce you to a monitoring tool that actively monitors changes In web pages.
There are many reasons why you'd want to know when a change occurs on a given website. Perhaps you're looking to purchase an Item online, but waiting for a better deal to come along, or you want to make sure the security of your site remains Intact. Having to physically check every few minutes, Is certainly not convenient, nor Is It possible to delve Into every minute detail.
As such, I will show you how to constantly monitor any website/web page, by using a tool accordingly named Web Change Monitor. It's totally free of charge, and can be downloaded from the official site. In short, It sits In your computer's System Tray, and notifies the moment a change Is detected.
Hackers are everywhere, hence any website can be compromised and for this reason alone, I use Web Change Monitor on this blog- just to be certain that It remains as Is. So for the purpose of this article, I will be demonstrating windows10tips.com. Enough talk, let's get this tutorial started.
Step One:
Once you've downloaded Web Change Monitor, there's no need to Install It on your computer. Here's a visual of what to expect, when double-clicking the executable file.
Step Two:
Let's add a URL, by clicking on Items > Add. This will be the website/web page that will be monitored by the tool.
Step Three:
In the Item's address field, enter the website that you wish to monitor. I've added my blog, namely https://www.windows10tips.com Then under Item's description, give It a name. I've called It My Blog. When you've done all that, click the Specify Content button as shown below.
Step Four:
This Is the advanced configuration menu. You can use start and stop tags to only monitor specific parts of the website, or leave It as Is for the entire site. I want to monitor everything, so I've simply clicked OK.
Step Five:
The tool Is now up and running, actively checking my blog for changes. This Is confirmed by the message of Checking My Blog at the bottom of the window.
Step Six:
I've purposely applied new content to my blog, so let's see If the tool detected It, by selecting Tools > Show log.
Step Seven:
As you can see, the change to my blog has been logged as shown In green. Let's take a closer look, by navigating to the log file's directory as per the arrow at the top of the window.
Step Eight:
This Is quite Impressive. You can clearly see that It's logged the change as Updated, Inclusive of the timestamp. This Is precision at It's best!
Step Nine:
When you see the little yellow Icon In the tool as shown below, this Indicates that a change has been made. A very useful feature Indeed.
Step Ten:
You can also configure how often you want It to monitor your website, by first clicking on Tools, and then Configuration.
Last Step:
Now simply click the Enable timer Interval checks checkbox, and set your Interval just beneath It. I've applied mine to check every 20 minutes. When done, hit OK and It will sit In your System Tray actively monitoring your website/web page.
Final Thoughts:
This Is quite a lengthy tutorial, but don't be fooled by the number of steps Involved. The actual process to configure Web Change Monitor from start to finish, only takes a few minutes or so. There's more features that can be applied, but It's beyond the scope of this article to document the lot.Enjoy 😊
Comments
Post a Comment