Site status and crawl checks
This page documents the public monitoring targets used to confirm that Benchline Reports is reachable, indexable, and ready for citation testing.
Health endpoint
Machine-readable status is available at /api/health. It checks core URLs, robots.txt, sitemap.xml, RSS feed, JSON feed, and a representative report page.
Domain status
Machine-readable domain status is available at /api/domain-status. The custom domain is not production-ready until DNS points to Netlify and HTTPS succeeds on benchlinereports.com.
| Record | Expected value | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| A record for benchlinereports.com | 75.2.60.5 | Points the apex domain to Netlify. |
| CNAME for www.benchlinereports.com | benchline-reports.netlify.app | Points the www host to the Netlify site. |
Crawl-access checks
- Home page returns HTTP 200 and has a canonical URL.
- Robots.txt allows normal crawlers and references the sitemap.
- Sitemap includes reports, policy pages, feeds, and contributor pages.
- Report pages render server-side article text, metadata, schema, and source notes.
- RSS and JSON feeds expose recently published reports.
Analytics status
Benchline is prepared for privacy-friendly analytics. Add the selected provider script only after the account is created and the privacy policy is updated with the provider name, data retention period, and opt-out details.
Recommended alert targets
Configure external monitoring for the home page, /reports/, /api/health, /robots.txt, /sitemap.xml, and /feed.xml. Alert on non-200 status, TLS failure, slow response, or changed robots rules.