Simplest way to ping or test for a website response...

[inVINCEable]

What is the best way to test just to see if a website is able to be reached? I am looking at fsockopen but it does not appear to work.

 

I simply want to see if a website like www.google.com ican be reached. Thank you for any advice, pointers.

 

 

[fanfavorite]

Well if you want to know if the domain is registered, you can use checkdnsrr, which you can read about here http://ca3.php.net/checkdnsrr.  If it does not exist, then obviously there is no website.  Keep in mind though that domains that are parked, with no website, will still show as true. 

[fanfavorite]

To check for if the website has something, try reading this http://bytes.com/forum/thread2406.html. 

[fanfavorite]

http://www.weberdev.com/get_example-4335.html is another example you may want to try. 

[Third_Degree]

fsockopen will work if it is used correctly...

 

You could use something like this:

if ( is_numeric( ip2long( gethostbyname( $_GET['host'] ) ) ) ) { print 'Exists!'; }

 

Or

fopen( $_GET['host'], 'r' );

 

Or use what fanfavorite said.