autodetect if page is down?

[crj]

is there a way to autodetect if a page is down without actually having to visit it?

i want to do this to a link to my forum, since its sometimes down.... so i would know in advance that nothing is going to show up if i click it...

[jiminsd]

You can visit these and see if any work for you....

http://www.qwkmon.com
http://www.websitepulse.com
http://www.alertra.com
http://www.serverrat.com
http://www.siteprobe.com
http://nfiniteweb.com/tools.html

[Bruce]

There is also http://interseer.com , but they aren't the most reliable.