WebProNews

When a link suddenly becomes a hot destination thanks to being featured on places like Fark, Digg, or Reddit, the Firefox plugin Mr Uptime can signal when it is safe to visit that site. Being featured on the front page of a social sharing site that can dump loads of traffic on a site can be part blessing and curse for the site publisher. If the webhost is up to the task of handling the traffic, all is well. If not, the linked site becomes Slashdotted/Dugg/Farked/Reddited to the point of being unreachable.

Uptime watchers Pingdom came up with Mr Uptime in response to the horrid disappointment a 404 or 503 result can bring to someone. The extension keeps trying to reach an unresponsive site in the background while the individual continues using Firefox as normal.

"The rapid success of Mr Uptime proves what we were convinced of all along, that there are a lot of frustrated people out there who have frequent problems with unavailable websites and find a tool like this really useful," Sam Nurmi, CEO of Pingdom, said in a statement.

Once the plugin finds a site has returned, it can open the site in a new tab or window, or simply alert the person that the site is back from the dead. Mr Uptime defaults to rechecking the site over a 168-hour period, which can be changed in its settings.