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Scheduled tasks without cron
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
If your web host doesn't allow for cron jobs ("scheduled tasks") this can cause problems for some scripts you might want to run.
Help is at hand however - SmartScripts.com have a free fakecron script that you can install on your server.
It is cgi-based and very simple to setup - just follow the installation instructions. The only bit which you may need help on is the time syntax. The fakecron script uses traditional crontab settings which can be difficult to get your head around e.g. a task scheduled to run at midnight every day will look like:
* 0 * * * http://yourdomain.com/scheduledtaskname
However, again, help is at hand - HTMLBasix have a fantastic free crontab generator that is simply to use. Just remember to remove /dev/null from the 'send results to:' box as this will not work in fakecron.
Labels: programming, resources, webdesign
