Automatic systems monitoring and web page logging

One of the areas we like to think we have an 'edge' in compared to our competitors is in managing systems, sites and servers remotely.

Now whilst there are a large number of tools to help with this, many of these are expensive and inappropriate, especially for SMEs. (Small and Medium sized Enterprises)

So we often prefer to build our own or use excellent but sometimes obscure Open Source or Shareware products.

One problem we recently had to solve was the need to run a scheduled job to grab a section of a graphical web page and then email it to a recipient.

A simple script, run from a scheduler, let us do this with perfect flexibility.

A good range of tools can be found at: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/web_site_screenshot.html, including their excellent SiteShoter command line screen grabber. Combine this with a command line SMTP mailer like Blat and away you go!