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Deployment
Set up a status page users can check when things break
Give users somewhere to look besides your support inbox during an incident.
Free Prompt
Set up a status page for my app so during an incident users can check a URL instead of flooding my inbox or my Twitter mentions.
Set up the following:
1. Pick a status page: a hosted service (Statuspage, BetterStack, Instatus) is fine, or a very simple static page I can update from a git repo if I want to keep it self-hosted. The requirement is that it lives outside my main infrastructure, so a full outage doesn't take the status page down too.
2. Components: list the components I'll report status on (Web app, API, Payments, Email, Auth). Don't list every microservice; users only care about the parts they interact with.
3. Automated checks: wire the status page to my uptime monitor so a failing check automatically flips the affected component to degraded/down. Manual-only status pages get forgotten during real incidents.
4. Incident templates: pre-write a short incident post for common scenarios (investigating, identified, monitoring, resolved) so during a real incident I'm editing a template, not writing from scratch while my hands shake.
5. Subscribers: let users subscribe to updates (email or RSS) so they can opt in to notifications instead of refreshing.
6. Public URL: publish it at status.mydomain.com (or link to the hosted URL from my footer) so users can find it without asking.
Don't lie on the status page. Users forgive outages; they don't forgive being told everything is fine while nothing works. The deliverable is the status page live at a discoverable URL, hooked up to uptime monitoring, with templated incident posts ready to go and a subscription option available.
What This Does / How This Helps
This gives users a URL that tells the truth during an outage, wired to your uptime monitor so components flip automatically, with pre-written templates so posting incident updates isn't more stressful than it already is. Without a status page, an outage generates the same question asked twenty times in a row across support, email, and social. You spend half the incident answering messages instead of fixing the problem. A status page moves that traffic to a single URL, keeps users informed, and buys you the quiet you need to actually resolve the incident.
Want to skip doing this by hand?
Fortivibe audits your app for all of the areas these prompts cover (and more).