Content Monitors
Content monitors verify that specific text appears (or doesn't appear) on your pages. They're perfect for ensuring critical content like phone numbers, prices, or legal text remains visible.
Automatic Content Detection
Smart Setup analyzes your pages and suggests content monitors automatically
When you add a website through Smart Setup, FlareWarden checks your page and automatically suggests content monitors based on what it finds. The following check types may be auto-detected:
| Check Type | Severity | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Error Detection | Critical | Absence check for common error messages (e.g., "Service Unavailable", "Database Error") |
| Domain Theft Protection | Critical | Verifies the page title matches expectations, detecting domain hijacking or defacement |
| Website Tampering Protection | Critical | Verifies the meta description remains unchanged, detecting unauthorized modifications |
| Copyright Verification | Degraded | Checks that footer copyright text is present, detecting page structure issues |
| Analytics Monitoring | Notify Only | Verifies tracking codes (e.g., Google Analytics) remain present on the page |
Re-run on existing monitors: You can re-run Smart Setup on any existing monitor to check for new content that should be monitored. Open the monitor settings and select "Re-run Smart Setup" to check the page again.
Visual Content Picker
Point and click to create content monitors — no CSS knowledge needed
The Visual Content Picker lets you browse a sanitized preview of your monitored website, hover over any element, and click to select it. FlareWarden generates a CSS selector and suggests the best check type based on what you selected — no manual configuration required.
Smart Detection
Automatically detects prices, links, images, buttons, headings, meta tags, and list items. Suggests numeric range for prices, attribute check for images and links, element count for repeated items.
Smarter Selectors
Filters out framework-generated class names from Tailwind, CSS Modules, Emotion, styled-components, Svelte, Vue, Astro, and Next.js. Prefers IDs and semantic attributes over volatile class names.
Mobile Support
Full touch support with long-press navigation. Tap to select elements, long-press links to navigate within the picker view without leaving the selector.
How to use it: The Visual Picker is available when adding or editing content checks on any monitor. Open the monitor's content tab and click "Add Content Monitor" to browse your site and pick elements visually.
Common Use Cases
How content monitors help protect your business
Contact Information
Ensure phone numbers, email addresses, and addresses are always visible.
Pricing & Products
Detect when product prices or availability text changes unexpectedly.
Legal Disclaimers
Verify required legal text, privacy notices, or compliance statements are present.
Error Detection
Alert when error messages like "Service Unavailable" or "Database Error" appear.
Configuration Options
Customize how content is monitored and validated
Keyword
The text to search for on the page. This can be a word, phrase, or longer text string. You can also use the Visual Content Picker to select an element and auto-populate the CSS selector and check type fields.
"Add to Cart"
"Terms and Conditions apply"
Match Type
Presence
Alert when the keyword is NOT found on the page. Use this for content that should always be present.
Absence
Alert when the keyword IS found on the page. Use this for error messages or unwanted content.
Regex
Match using a regular expression pattern. Alert when the pattern is not found.
Advanced Check Types
Element Count
Count elements matching a CSS selector and alert if the count falls outside an expected range. Useful for product grids, navigation menus, and search results.
Attribute Check
Verify an element's HTML attribute (src, href, content, etc.) exists and optionally contains an expected value. Great for CDN integrity, canonical URLs, and OpenGraph tags.
Numeric Range
Extract a numeric value from page content and alert if it falls outside min/max bounds. Perfect for monitoring prices, stock counts, ratings, and other metrics.
Change Detection
Capture a baseline of content on first check, then alert whenever it changes. Ideal for legal pages, terms of service, copyright notices, and brand text.
Page Path
Optionally specify a specific path on the parent monitor's domain to check. If left blank, the parent monitor's URL is used.
/contact
/api/v1/status
Case Sensitivity
Choose whether the keyword match should be case-sensitive.
- Case-insensitive (default): "error" matches "Error", "ERROR", "error"
- Case-sensitive: "Error" only matches "Error" exactly
Severity Level
How content failures affect your monitor status:
Regex Pattern Matching
Use regular expressions for advanced content matching
When you select Regex as the match type, you can use regular expression patterns for more flexible content matching:
Example Patterns
\$[0-9]+\.[0-9]{2} - Match prices like $19.99
\d{3}-\d{3}-\d{4} - Match phone numbers like 555-123-4567
v[0-9]+\.[0-9]+\.[0-9]+ - Match version numbers like v2.1.0
Copyright \d{4} - Match copyright with year
Note: Regex patterns use Go's RE2 syntax. The pattern is matched against the entire page content. Case sensitivity applies to regex patterns too.
Performance Optimization
Smart techniques to reduce bandwidth and improve check speed
Content monitors use smart optimization techniques to reduce bandwidth and improve check speed:
- ETag Support: When available, uses ETags to skip unchanged pages
- Hash Comparison: Falls back to content hashing when ETags aren't available
- HEAD Requests: Uses lightweight HEAD requests when possible
Check Interval Restrictions
Content monitors have their own check interval, independent of the parent uptime monitor. However, if the target server doesn't support ETag or Last-Modified headers, the minimum check interval is 5 minutes to avoid excessive bandwidth usage. FlareWarden automatically detects optimization support on the first check.
Agency Tip: Grant Content Manager Access
Share monitor visibility with clients and content teams
You can invite clients or content managers to view only their content monitors. This is perfect for agencies who want to give clients visibility into their content checks without exposing other monitoring data.
Learn about monitor-specific accessExample Configurations
Real-world content monitoring scenarios
Phone Number Visibility
Keyword:
1-800-555-0123
Match Type: Presence
Severity: Critical
Alerts immediately if the phone number disappears from the page.
Error Page Detection
Keyword:
Service Unavailable
Match Type: Absence
Severity: Critical
Alerts when an error message appears on the page.
Version Number Check
Pattern:
v[0-9]+\.[0-9]+\.[0-9]+
Match Type: Regex
Severity: Degraded
Alerts if a version number format disappears from the page (useful for API documentation pages).
Promotion Banner Check
Keyword:
Free Shipping
Match Type: Presence
Severity: Notify Only
Notifies when promotional content is removed, without affecting status.
Advanced Check Type Examples
Product Grid Count
Selector:
.product-card
Match Type: Element Count
Minimum: 12
Severity: Degraded
Alerts if the product grid shows fewer than 12 items, which may indicate a data feed issue.
Image CDN Integrity
Selector:
img.hero
Match Type: Attribute Check
Attribute: src
Contains:
cdn.example.com
Severity: Critical
Alerts if the hero image source no longer points to the expected CDN, indicating a broken deployment or asset misconfiguration.
Price Range Validation
Selector:
.product-price
Match Type: Numeric Range
Range: 0.01 – 9,999.99
Severity: Critical
Alerts if a product price drops to zero, goes negative, or spikes to an unreasonable value.
Terms of Service Change
Selector:
.tos-content
Match Type: Change Detection
Severity: Notify Only
Captures a baseline of the Terms of Service on first check. Notifies if the content changes, helping track legal updates.