Introduction and overview
Cron jobs are commands used to schedule tasks that must run periodically, for instance: from Monday to Friday at 3PM. These jobs allow you to automate some commands and scripts on your server, to automatically run repetitive tasks. For instance, you could create a cron job to send emails every X days. This is a system process that runs in the background.
Use
Cron jobs can be controlled via the cPanel.
- Connect to your cPanel and click on Advanced Tools > Cron Jobs.
- Click on Standard or Advanced, depending on your level of experience (Standard is recommended).
- Specify the command to run, its schedule, and click on Add New Cron Job.
Examples
To run a PHP script called script.php located in your /public_html/ folder, you can use the following Cron command: /usr/local/bin/php -q /home/[username]/public_html/script.php > /dev/null
- Replace /home/[username]/public_html/script.php by the path to your script
- By default, the cron job sends a confirmation of successful execution after each run. By adding > /dev/null at the end of the command, you specify to the task that it should not send you an email.
