Plan which websites to monitor

Choose sites and important pages that justify continuous local monitoring.

Last checked 21 August 2026

Build your portfolio around websites and pages where detecting a technical change would lead to action. TechDash runs monitoring on this computer, so the number of pages, their frequencies, and available CPU, memory, and network capacity affect how quickly checks complete.

Choose websites

Add sites you own or manage and are authorized to check. A website entry provides one container for:

  • A hostname and HTTPS origin.
  • A display name and starting page.
  • Monitored pages and their check schedules.
  • HTTP Basic Authentication and user-agent settings.
  • Custom checks and a Google Search Console connection.
  • SSL, domain, DNS, site-resource, incident, screenshot, and icon data.

Use one website entry per hostname. TechDash prevents adding the same hostname twice, and pages added later must match that website's hostname. Initial redirect handling can normalize an apex host to www or another landing hostname, so check the card after setup.

Start with important pages

The address entered in Add website becomes the first monitored page. Start with a small set where a failure or SEO change has clear business impact:

  • High-traffic landing pages
  • Revenue or lead-generation pages
  • Important category and product templates
  • Pages affected by frequent releases
  • URLs with known indexability or rendering risk
  • Representative pages for different templates, languages, or markets

Avoid adding many near-identical URLs only to increase coverage. A representative page per template often gives a clearer signal with less queue pressure. Add more pages when they carry distinct risk, content, internal-link roles, or Search Console value.

Choose a sensible frequency

The website options are Every 15 minutes, Hourly, Daily, and Weekly. Daily is the default.

Use faster schedules for pages where waiting a day would be costly, such as a checkout entry point, campaign landing page, or frequently deployed homepage. Use Weekly for stable, lower-risk references. New pages inherit the website frequency, but you can change one page later.

Changing Check frequency through Edit Website updates every monitored page on that website. Review the full page list before making that change.

Organize agencies and larger portfolios

Use Website name in Edit Website for client, brand, region, or environment labels. Portfolio Search checks both that name and the hostname and supports patterns such as *.com and client*.

Do not create a second entry for a subdirectory such as /blog; add it as another monitored page under the same hostname. A true subdomain, such as shop.example.com, is a different hostname and can be its own website entry.

Pause an individual site during maintenance, or pause all monitoring from the tray when the entire portfolio should wait.

Check capacity after setup

Open Queue Status after the portfolio has completed several cycles. Watch for sustained page backlogs and websites with high pressure. If work cannot keep up:

  1. Remove low-value monitored pages.
  2. Change very frequent pages to a slower interval.
  3. Lower Concurrent Crawls if the computer feels busy, or raise it only when hardware capacity allows.
  4. Keep TechDash running in the background long enough for scheduled work to complete.
  5. Remember that offline time, a locked screen, battery operation, and a captive connection can delay work.

Brand screenshot and icon refresh waits when page-check pressure is high, so stale imagery can be a capacity signal rather than a website failure.

A practical starting portfolio

For each new website, begin with the homepage, one conversion page, one major category or service page, and one representative page for each important template. Keep the default Daily schedule. After observing queue health and the usefulness of incidents, add pages or increase frequency where the evidence justifies it.

A suitable starting portfolio produces useful results without a waiting-page backlog that keeps growing. If a small Daily portfolio remains persistently backlogged while the computer is awake and online, open Help & Support. Include the TechDash version, operating system, number of enabled websites and pages, frequency mix, Concurrent Crawls value, and screenshots of Queue Status and website pressure.

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