Cabin Fever Software

It's the most common type of outage, and we don't know why some other services don't report them. If Scarecrow runs into an error accessing a site, it tries two more times before reporting the outage. At that point other Scarecrow "agents" will attempt to verify the outage. If one or more of them accesses the site without an error, we call it a "disputed" outage. Their duration tends to be shorter than non-disputed outages. We have a blog post on this if you'd like more information.

It's not just because we're geeks and do things differently. Take that, Mom. It's also because we want Scarecrow to be as responsive as possible. So the entire application actually exists in just one web page: this one.

The unfortunate side effect is that using your "Back" and "Forward" buttons will take you away from the page where Scarecrow's Dashboard lives.

Up to you, within limits. You can choose a 5, 10, or 15-minute interval. You can also choose a 5, 10, 15, or 30-minute notification delay, depending on how sensitive you want downtime notifications to be. Or you can turn off uptime checking entirely. It's all under the "Configure Site" link for each site on your Dashboard.

Yep. Up to four additional addresses per site. Scarecrow also sends notifications to your primary address (the one we have on file for you) by default, but you can disable that on a per-site basis if you like.

Yes. Sort of. The "standard" package (which is the only one currently available) includes 2GB of storage for files and we support up to 2000 files. Later we plan to offer a "premium service" package with up to 10GB and 10,000 files.

Right now, the Dashboard works better with a smaller number of files, so that's what we recommend--but if you don't mind the slow response and screwiness when viewing snapshots and backups, go for it. We're not actually limiting your storage space to 2GB, either, until we get the premium package ready.

The file-count does not apply to archived versions of the files--if, at any given point, your site has fewer than 2000 files, all should be well.

Primarily we want to serve small businesses with websites hosted on Linux servers (which is most small-business sites--if you're not sure, we can check for you). There are the following limitations:

• We do not support any sort of FTP (aka content checking) for sites hosted on Microsoft Windows machines. We may address this in the future. Let us know if you'd like this to be included.
• Sites using Drupal, Joomla, WordPress, or other Content Management Systems may be backed up by Scarecrow, but there are more steps involved: (1) set Scarecrow to back up only the files that you or your developer have actually changed (to avoid needlessly backing up thousands of files), and (2) back up your database. Feel free to drop us a line if you need help setting this up.
• We do not support backups of more than 2GB or 2000 files.

There are two parts to this one. First, you need to back the database up to a file stored where Scarecrow can find it. Second, you set up one of your "sites" within Scarecrow to back up the directory that stores your database backup files.

For the first part...if you need help getting your database regularly backed up to a file you can access, you may want to contact your hosting provider or the person who set up or maintains your website. If you can't get an answer you like, let us know and we'll try to help. Whether you use Scarecrow or not, you really do want backups that you can see and take with you if/when you change hosting providers.

The second part is pretty easy. Click the "Configure Site" link from your Dashboard. Enter the name or IP address of the server that stores your database backup files. On the third tab, enter your credentials and the correct subdirectory in the field labeled with: "My site's SFTP server stores my files in the following subdirectory (if any):". If you are already monitoring a web server at that address, or if the machine you're accessing is not a web server, you can disable the uptime monitoring under the "Uptime" tab.

Partly because we like to think you have friends. If so, feel free to let them use Scarecrow for their sites. No extra charge--it's just our way of helping you out. You know, socially.

Also, some people have a database or two behind their website. It's possible to use a "site" within Scarecrow to back up a database, or other file that's stored where your average web browser can't find it.

Well, it's hard to put numbers to this sort of thing. Here's our goal: MUCH safer than they were on your server.

We use SFTP where possible to get a copy of each file, then use SSL (aka HTTPS, or the same encryption you use with online banking) to transfer the files to Amazon's S3 "cloud". On top of that, we encrypt each file with AES, using a separate encryption key per site, so not even Amazon employees can read your files when they're in storage. On top of that, we rename the files to look something like "sc232265b06ec3012ecdb7002655484ed4.cfs" and not even Amazon employees can see which file belongs to which site.

Oh, and the numbers? We can't swear to it ourselves, but Amazon claims 99.999999999% "durability" and 99.99% availability. We back up our databases using the same service. To put it another way: we're serious about this stuff. If the above isn't good enough, let us know and we'll see what we can do.

Good question.

Actually we back up new or changed files rather than entire sites. Scarecrow checks your files once an hour. A file is not backed up immediately--we wait for the next hourly check, to be sure it's not changing too quickly. (What's wrong with quick changes? We back up specific versions of a file--if a file is modified again before we back it up, life gets complicated for us. So we wait.)

Backups do begin within a few minutes for a brand-new site, however.

Just a picture of your site as of a particular moment in time. You can see your files in a couple of ways: browsing backup sets and viewing snapshots. Backup sets show only the files backed up. Snapshots let you specify a particular moment in time, and view all files Scarecrow knows about as of that moment.

Yes. You can view either backup sets or snapshots. From either, you can click on a filename and bring up its history. From there, you can download any file version you like.

Two ways, and soon to be three.

In the simplest, Scarecrow copies the version you've selected of each file you've chosen to restore to your server.

In the "Almost-Atomic" restore, Scarecrow first creates a subdirectory and copies all files to that subdirectory. When they're in place, Scarecrow moves each file to its final resting place in a single transaction. The Almost-Atomic restore theoretically takes slightly longer to complete and does require extra storage space for a brief period, but any customers browsing your site are much less likely to find inconsistent web pages (especially when Scarecrow is allowed to use SFTP rather than FTP).

The third method, which is not yet available, will allow you to request a .zip file of a snapshot. In other words, Scarecrow will create a single file for you to download which will contain all of Scarecrow's files from your site as of the point in time you select.