Simple standalone website checking tool

Question

Background:

We run a content management platform that hosts 20+ separate websites - some intranets and some internet sites - so that have different end points routed for internal or external access.

We are currently upgrading our infrastructure - including software versions, hardware, changes of IP/VIP/DNS entries etc which affects all of the sites.

I want to be able to run a repeatable site test against all sites check everything is working fine and I'd like to do it from different end points (locally on each box in the cluster, from the cluster level, from the internet, from the intranet extra.

Anyone know of a simple tool that requires no sofware to install to run a repeatable regression test against a whole bunch of defined URL's?

I was thinking of a HTML page that I can run from different locations that is essentially a link checker.

Can anyone recommend a simple way to provide a level of automatic testing of our sites (in addition to our manual verification.

Thanks

Answer 1

Sounds like you're looking for Selenium: http://seleniumhq.org/

Edit

Wait, I think you mean 'Testing' them as in, check to see if they're online and reachable? Then I might just automate a series of ping or telnet commands, and check appropriate things. Would take a matter of minutes to write a little app in any language to do this.

Answer 2

>> 'Testing' them as in, check to see if they're online and reachable?

Yes that's exactly it!! I was thinking the same - I could script something up but I thought I'd check first to see if someone has already done this - I guess not!

Thanks

Answer 3

There is all sorts of web site monitoring software available (check google, or ask for recos here). That's what you're looking for. There is a whole range from free to very expensive that monitor and stress your site from around the world.

Or you can write simple shell scripts that do what you want.

Answer 4

Doesn't fit the "requires no sofware to install to run" part, and it's not necessarily super-cheap, but we've had great results with Radar Website Monitor for this kind of thing.