With respect to ping you can find out the commandline to use doing 'man ping'. As far as the remote file check goes, determine what means of access you have, could be anything from SSH to HTTP to SNMP.
Being a "newbie" should not be used as an excuse for not reading stuff like BASH Programming - Introduction HOW-TO and http://www.tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginne...tml/index.html
(the http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/ prolly being a bit too steep). Look only for basic tests and exit codes.
Having read those now you can write some "pseudo code" people can comment on and before you know it you're no newbie no more.