Last week I let you all in on our horror story of people unable to access one of our servers. While I got many of you paranoid, this is something that can be prevented. Below are some steps we’re taking now to ensure our servers are accessible from every single location domestically and internationally.

* Install Google Analytics on every landing page
- Google Analytics is free and literally takes 2 minutes to install. This way you can compare the number of unique visitors to the number of clicks you sent to see if there is a big discrepancy. You’ll also have the added luxury to see more visitor data, such as geographic information, time spent on site, exit pages, bounce rate, etc. After a few weeks, use this data to scale your campaign up to even more traffic.

* Check your server from multiple proxies
- Proxy4Free.com has a pretty large list of domestic and international proxies. This is one of the tools that helped us find our problem. Try your server IP, landing page, etc. on multiple proxies and make sure it loads. If it doesn’t, you’re going to want to investigate why.

* Use Prosper 202
- Many affiliates already use this, but if you’re not definitely check it out. Prosper 202 is a free, self-hosted tracking platform that can be used on all of your campaigns. We’ve even tweaked this so it can be used on high volume media buys. Using Prosper you can compare the number of clicks on your advertisements to the number of people that reached your landing page. However, you will want to be sure to ‘display all clicks’ and don’t ‘filter out clicks’ to get an accurate number. You can also use their ‘Spy’ feature to get a live view of visitors interacting with your landing pages. I seriously watch this all day!

* Inspect DNS on your landing page
- As I’ve already stated, DNS was NOT our issue. However, when receiving errors such as ours, this is the first thing you’re going to want to check. intoDNS.com is an excellent free resource to do so. Simply type in your domain name and check for errors. If you see any, notify your web hosting immediately!

* Hire a third party monitoring/server administration team
- Most dedicated server providers provide a limited amount of ‘managed service’ support. Some are better than others (RackSpace rocks) so it is always my recommendation to go the extra mile and hire another third party group to manage your server. I recommend Platinum Server Management as they answer tickets promptly and are very affordable ($29/mo). They also only hire level 3 technicians which ensures you don’t get a hold of a 15 year old working out of their bedroom.

In conclusion, none of these services will do any good unless you use them daily. Don’t just install Google Analytics and wait for a problem. Check over your data each morning when you’re looking at the previous day’s stats. It is likely you may see minor discrepancies but if you notice something major, investigate as soon as possible. This will save yourself much stress, time, and money. Let me know if you have any questions on any of the above resources!