Frequently Asked Questions

Here are some frequently asked questions. If these do not help please check out our support page for more options.

 What is Pagehammer.com for?

Pagehammer.com is a crawling agent that looks for changes to web pages on a schedule set by our users and then sending them an e-mail if it detects changes. This process of checking sites to see if there are changes is called by various names:

Hammering

Scanning

Pinging

Monitoring

 What should I expect to happen if a page changes?

Pagehammer.com will send you an e-mail notice the next time one is scheduled telling you what pages had changes

 How long before I receive my new account email?

The confirmation email is sent within 5 seconds after clicking the save button in new account registration. Remember, until you reply to the email sent, no web pages will be monitored. This is to protect yourself from someone else signing you up for the service.

 What kinds of pages can't it scan?

Pagehammer.com can not scan pages that:

You have to login to see

When you browse to other pages in the site the top URL does not change

If you are deep in the site, and you delete or block the sites cookie and the next navigation takes you to an unexpected page

Any page that if you bookmark and then comeback to it, you get a different page

Any page where the content is in flash or some other multimedia technology not words

 What is a Channel?

A channel is a collection of different web page url's that you would like to monitor. Utilizing a channel, all web pages contained within must honor the rules the channel dictates.

Features of a channel include:

Additional email addresses to send content changes to

Custom email subject line

Keyword matching

Keyword highlighting

Keyword exclusion

 So what if I have an "un-hammer-able" page, am I stuck?

There are (unfortunately) sites that can not be hammered but there may be a workaround:

Point the mouse over the hyperlink to the page you want scanned

look in the status bar of the browser, do you see a different URL then the one you see on the top of the page when you click on the link?

If so, make note of the url floating over the link gives you and then enter that as the page to be watched by Pagehammer.com instead

 How can I tell if the page I am trying to hammer is multimedia and can't be scanned?

Do a [View Source] from your browser's menu, if you do not see the words in the page, chances are, Pagehammer.com can not scan the page.

 What types of content can I monitor?

You can monitor any content that you can browse to and display in a browser such as Microsoft IE, FireFox or NetScape (Mozilla).

 How do I "test" a URL to see if its likely to be "hammer-able"?

Do the following steps:

Copy the URL of the page to notepad

Close all your browser windows

Clear you browser cache

Delete any cookies for that site

Open a new browser window and copy the link you put into notepad into the address bar and see if it goes where you expect

 What does Pagehammer.com look for on a web page it is monitoring?

Our back end service that provides the monitoring capabilities is named Sweeper. Sweeper looks at only the content that is visible when viewed within a web browser. Images are ignored, only the content the human eye can see is monitored. Changes in style sheets, tags and formatting will not trigger a change notification.

 Can I view the differences from past change detections?

Yes, just go to Pagehammer.com and click the "View channels" link on the right side of the screen. Then select the web page monitor in the middle of the screen, if there are past changes, click the web page and select the desired date and time of the change to view. The changed content will display exactly as it was originally mailed to you.

 I am not getting e-mails from Pagehammer.com

Do the following in your e-mail client such as Outlook, Eudora, Thunderbird, Hotmail, G-Mail, Yahoo, etc:

Check your spam or junk settings, to see if e-mails from Pagehammer.com are being filtered, and mark them as not being spam

Add Pagehammer.com to your safe or whitelist (if you're not sure how to do this, check with your e-mail provider)

Is the e-mail address you gave Pagehammer.com correct? If not contact support.

 Can I temporarily stop receiving PageHammer notification without deleting monitors?

Yes, you can put channels "On-Hold". Edit the desired channel and click the On-Hold option from the Channel Status drop-down menu. When a channel is "On Hold", Pagehammer.com will stop notifying you of changes for every monitor in the channel.

 How can I tell if a page is being hammered or not?

A "light" next to the web page address of pages that are being hammered is a monitor indicator. The color of the light: green, yellow, and red, indicates the success or failure of PageHammer to contact web pages that are being hammered.

Green indicates that the page was successfully contacted in at least one of the last 5 attempts.

Yellow indicates that the page has not been successfully contacted in the last 5 consecutive attempts.

Red indicates that the page has not been successfully contacted in the last 10 consecutive attempts.

 I need to change the email address where my PageHammer change notifications are sent.

You can change your email address in the PageHammer account page:

Click the My Account link on the PageHammer home page

Enter the new email address where you want to receive change notifications, then re-enter the address to verify the address

Click the Save button

 How can I unsubscribe from PageHammer?

The PageHammer application provides the ability to unsubscribe from our service:

Click the My Account link on the PageHammer home page

Click the Unsubscribe button

Click Yes confirm that you want to unsubscribe

 What can I do if I don’t want to see all the content that is deleted from a page?

You can hide deleted text when you add a page to monitor, or by editing the information about a page that is already being monitored.

When adding a page:

Click the Add monitor to page link

In the Deleted text drop-down list select the option “Do not include in email”

In a current page:

Click the page edit icon to the right of the URL for the page being monitored

In the Deleted text drop-down list select the option “Do not include in email”