Hudu's website monitoring retrieves the public WHOIS information for a client's website, letting you track website status, domain (name) expiration, and SSL certificate expiration.
Website pages can be related to relevant credentials or assets, and domain and SSL expirations are automatically added to a client's Expirations tab.
Visit Relationships and Expirations for additional information on linking websites and tracking expirations.
Guides
To start tracking a client's website, navigate to an individual client space. Websites is on the left-hand menu under Core.
Adding websites
- Open the Websites tab on the left-hand menu. This view lists all client websites currently being tracked.
- Click + New in the top right.
- Enter the website's URL in the Name field, and add any Notes or Labels.
- Choose your monitoring and tracking settings (see Managing monitoring and tracking settings below).
- Click Create or Create and Add Another.
When you open a website (existing or newly added), Hudu displays the information pulled from that site's public WHOIS record, including:
- Status
- Name (domain) expiration
- SSL certificate expiration
- A, MX, and AAAA records
- Name servers
- TXT records
- Full SSL certificate
- DKIM / SPF / DMARC
Managing monitoring and tracking settings
Monitoring and tracking settings are available when adding a website, or by clicking into an existing website and choosing Edit.
By default, website monitoring is on, and DNS, SSL certificate, and WHOIS tracking are checked for comprehensive visibility into your domain and site status. DMARC, DKIM, and SPF tracking are unchecked by default and can be turned on as needed.
- Website monitoring — monitors the website's availability and runs daily automatic checks. When this toggle is off, the Tracking options are hidden and the website won't refresh automatically, so expiration, DNS, and SSL information is paused until you perform a manual refresh or turn monitoring back on.
When website monitoring is on, check or uncheck each type under Tracking:
- DNS — tracks the website's DNS records.
- SSL certificate — monitors SSL certificate status and expiration. If unchecked, you won't receive alerts about expiring certificates.
- WHOIS — tracks changes to domain registration information.
- DMARC — monitors your domain's DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance) policy and reports.
- DKIM — tracks DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) records so email messages are properly signed and trusted by recipients.
- SPF — monitors SPF (Sender Policy Framework) records, which define the mail servers permitted to send email on behalf of your domain.
As of version 2.49, website monitoring is a single toggle and each tracking type is a checkbox under Tracking. Changing the layout of these controls doesn't change any existing website's settings.
Tools
Additional tools let you relate a website to other items, store documentation, and view websites globally. Expand each section to learn more.
Website pages can be related directly to other items in Hudu — for example, tying a website to an asset for easy navigation.
Visit Relationships for additional information.
The domain and SSL certificate of tracked websites are automatically added to the client's Expirations section, and can also be found in the Hudu admin Global → Expirations tab.
Visit Expirations for additional information.
The Files module lets users attach files to a website. Any user with access can view them, and users with the editor role or above can upload their own. Click the drop zone on the right-hand sidebar to browse, or drag and drop files directly.
Visit File Management for supported file types and size limits.
The Comments section provides a simple text field for any additional information that may not fit directly into the website page or other sections.
Navigate to Hudu Global → Websites to see all websites across your environment, regardless of which client space they belong to. Only groups with Global access see this option on the toolbar.
Additional Abilities
The sections below introduce additional features associated with websites. Unless noted otherwise, these can be found at the bottom of the right-hand action menu when viewing a website page.
Activity logs provide detailed information on the actions performed on a specific website. Any action is recorded in the Hudu admin Global → Activity Logs, and can be filtered by client name, action performed, user who performed the action, or the IP address the action was performed from.
Visit Activity Logs for additional information.
This lets admins and super admins see who has access to the website you're viewing.
- Users with access are marked by a green check mark.
- Restricted users are marked by a red X.
If a physical copy of the website information is needed, click the Printer icon in the top right to open a PDF handoff containing all of the website's information.
Track changes and compare differences with the website version history tool. When viewing a website, find the activity feed in the right-hand tool panel and click an update to open the site version history.
FAQ
Australia and New Zealand do not publicly release all of a website's WHOIS information. WHOIS queries on .au and .nz domains won't reveal details such as creation or expiry dates for the domain, so those fields can't be populated in Hudu.
No. Hudu does not currently perform DNS lookups on subdomains when monitoring SPF and DMARC records.
The Tracking options only appear when Website monitoring is on. Turn the toggle back on to see and change them.
Troubleshooting
If Website monitoring is turned off, the website won't refresh automatically, so expiration, DNS, and SSL tracking won't update on their own. Click into the website, choose Edit, and turn the Website monitoring toggle back on, or perform a manual refresh to pull updated information.