--- title: Blog — page 3 of 7 description: Practical guides on monitoring, reliability, and performance — plus product news and lessons from the WatchFor team. canonical: https://watchfor.io/blog/page/3 --- # What we watch for — page 3 Practical guides on monitoring, reliability, and performance — plus product news and lessons from keeping our own systems online. [All](/blog)[Monitoring](/blog/category/monitoring)[Networking](/blog/category/networking)[Performance](/blog/category/performance)[Security](/blog/category/security)[Reliability](/blog/category/reliability)[Email](/blog/category/email)[DevOps](/blog/category/devops)[Engineering](/blog/category/engineering) [All articles](/blog/all) 136 article s · page 3 of 7 [MonitoringJun 23, 2026 ## Uptime Monitoring 101: how to never be the last to know The worst way to find out your website is down is from an angry customer. This is the beginner-friendly guide to uptime monitoring — what it is, why it matters, and how to set it up so you always hear it first.WatchFor Team6 min read](/blog/uptime-monitoring-101)[NetworkingJun 22, 2026 ## HTTP Status Codes Explained: what 404, 500 and 503 really mean Every status code is your server trying to tell you something. Here's a plain-English guide to the ones you'll actually meet — what they mean, whose fault they are, and what to do about each.WatchFor Team4 min read](/blog/http-status-codes-explained)[PerformanceJun 19, 2026 ## Core Web Vitals Explained: LCP, CLS, INP (and how to keep them green) Google grades your pages on three numbers — and they affect both how your site feels and how it ranks. Here's what LCP, CLS and INP actually measure, what 'good' looks like, and how to fix them.WatchFor Team4 min read](/blog/core-web-vitals-explained)[NetworkingJun 16, 2026 ## How to Never Get Caught by an Expired SSL Certificate An expired TLS certificate takes your whole site offline with a scary red warning — and it's 100% preventable. Here's why certificates expire, what it costs, and how to make sure it never catches you.WatchFor Team3 min read](/blog/ssl-certificate-expiry)[NetworkingJun 12, 2026 ## How DNS Works (and What 'Propagation' Really Means) DNS is the internet's phonebook — and one of the most common causes of outages nobody understands. Here's how a domain name becomes an IP address, in plain English, plus what 'propagation' actually is.WatchFor Team4 min read](/blog/how-dns-works)[ReliabilityJun 09, 2026 ## The Blameless Postmortem: turning incidents into improvements (with a template) After an outage you can hunt for someone to blame, or hunt for what to fix. Only one makes you more reliable. Here's how to run a blameless postmortem — plus a copy-paste template.WatchFor Team5 min read](/blog/blameless-postmortem)[MonitoringJun 06, 2026 ## Synthetic vs Real User Monitoring (RUM): what's the difference? Synthetic monitoring and RUM answer two different questions about your site. Here's what each one does, where each shines, and why the best setups use both.WatchFor Team4 min read](/blog/synthetic-vs-real-user-monitoring)[MonitoringJun 03, 2026 ## API Monitoring Guide: how to watch the endpoints your business runs on Your website can be perfectly up while your API quietly fails — and APIs power the integrations, apps and partners you can't see. Here's how to monitor them properly.WatchFor Team4 min read](/blog/api-monitoring-guide)[MonitoringMay 30, 2026 ## What is 99.9% Uptime? The downtime hiding behind the nines “99.9% uptime” sounds almost perfect — until you do the maths. Here's exactly how much downtime each level of nines allows, how it's calculated, and how to pick a target you can actually hit.WatchFor Team3 min read](/blog/what-is-99-9-percent-uptime)[ReliabilityMay 27, 2026 ## On-Call Best Practices: a rotation that doesn't burn people out Done badly, on-call wrecks sleep, morale and retention. Done well, it's a fair, calm safety net the whole team trusts. Here's how to build the second kind.WatchFor Team4 min read](/blog/on-call-best-practices)[MonitoringMay 23, 2026 ## Website Downtime: the most common causes (and how to prevent each) Most outages aren't mysterious — they come from the same short list of causes, again and again. Here's that list, what each one looks like, and how to stop it taking your site down.WatchFor Team4 min read](/blog/website-downtime-causes)[MonitoringMay 20, 2026 ## Observability vs Monitoring: what's the difference (and do you need both)? Monitoring tells you something broke. Observability helps you figure out why. Here's how the two differ, where each fits, and why modern teams lean on both.WatchFor Team3 min read](/blog/observability-vs-monitoring)[ReliabilityMay 16, 2026 ## Incident Metrics Explained: MTTR, MTTD, MTBF and friends MTTR, MTTD, MTBF, MTTA — the alphabet soup of incident metrics, explained in plain English. What each measures, how to calculate it, and how to actually improve the numbers.WatchFor Team3 min read](/blog/incident-metrics-mttr-mttd-mtbf)[NetworkingMay 13, 2026 ## 502 Bad Gateway: what it means and how to fix it A 502 Bad Gateway means the server in front of your app couldn't get a valid response from the app itself. Here's what's really happening, the usual causes, and how to fix — and prevent — it.WatchFor Team4 min read](/blog/502-bad-gateway)[NetworkingMay 09, 2026 ## DNS Record Types Explained: A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, TXT and more Setting up a domain means meeting a zoo of record types — A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, TXT, NS. Here's what each one does, when to use it, and the gotchas that trip people up.WatchFor Team4 min read](/blog/dns-record-types-explained)[SecurityMay 06, 2026 ## How HTTPS Works: the TLS handshake, explained simply That little padlock does a lot of work. Here's what actually happens when you connect over HTTPS — the TLS handshake, certificates and encryption — without the cryptography headache.WatchFor Team3 min read](/blog/how-https-works)[NetworkingMay 02, 2026 ## Ping, Traceroute & MTR: network troubleshooting basics When something's slow or unreachable, three classic tools tell you whether it's you, the network, or them. Here's how ping, traceroute and MTR work — and when to reach for each.WatchFor Team3 min read](/blog/ping-traceroute-mtr)[ReliabilityApr 29, 2026 ## Incident Response: a step-by-step playbook The alert just fired. Now what? A clear, repeatable incident-response process — from detection to all-clear — so the answer is never 'everyone panic'.WatchFor Team3 min read](/blog/incident-response-playbook)[EmailApr 25, 2026 ## Email Authentication Explained: SPF, DKIM & DMARC If your emails land in spam — or scammers send mail pretending to be you — these three records are why. Here's what SPF, DKIM and DMARC do, how they work together, and how to set them up right.WatchFor Team4 min read](/blog/spf-dkim-dmarc-explained)[PerformanceApr 22, 2026 ## Latency & Percentiles: why p99 matters more than the average Your average response time looks great — so why are users complaining? Because averages lie. Here's why percentiles like p95 and p99 tell the real story of how your service feels.WatchFor Team3 min read](/blog/latency-percentiles-p99) --- Canonical page: https://watchfor.io/blog/page/3 · Site guide: https://watchfor.io/llms.txt