Can I use cronjobs in web hosting packages?

A cronjob is essentially a Unix command that executes a script or program on a specific time or date. Cronjobs are mostly used for retrieving email, sending email and update checks.

You can easily create cronjobs using the web hosting packages of TransIP. Although this does not work based on Unix commands, you can use these cronjobs to periodically execute PHP scripts and programs. 

This article shows you how to configure cronjobs in your control panel using a web hosting package.

Creating cronjobs

Log in to the control panel and click 'Shared Hosting' in the menu. Next, select your domain below 'Products'.

Click 'Advanced' at the top, followed by 'Cronjobs'.

Here you will find an overview of your created cronjobs. To create a new cronjob, click the button '+ Add'.

When creating a cronjob, you need to fill in the following information:

• The frequency of the cronjob
• The URL where the script is located

Frequency

When configuring a cronjob, you can choose when and how many times the cronjob needs to be executed. You can choose 5 variables: minutes, hours, days, months and weekdays.

There are several ways to set the frequency. You can view the possible options by clicking on the drop down menus. The result of the selected options is shown below 'Cron helper'.

Click on 'Save' to activate your cronjob. 

Creating Cronjobs via SSH

You can also add cronjobs via SSH. The advantage of this is that there is less delay, and the script can run longer (20 minutes) than when you set up a cronjob via the control panel (5 minutes).

To schedule cronjobs, you use a crontab. You can open the crontab with:

crontab -e

Every cronjob you create in the crontab is set up on a single line and consists of two parts: one part specifying when the command should be executed, and another part specifying which task should be run:

* 0 * * * your_command_or_script
    

• Replace your_command_or_script with a shell script or command, for example:

5 * * * * /usr/bin/php /site/www/script.php
    # or:
    * 

• The asterisks indicate when the cronjob will be executed. In the above example, the 0 means the command will be executed every day at midnight (0:00). The asterisks in a cronjob represent the following values:

# ┌───────────── minute (0 - 59)
    # │ ┌───────────── hour (0 - 23)
    # │ │ ┌───────────── day of the month (1 - 31)
    # │ │ │ ┌───────────── month (1 - 12)
    # │ │ │ │ ┌───────────── day of the week (0 - 6) (Sunday to Saturday)
    # │ │ │ │ │
    # │ │ │ │ │
    # │ │ │ │ │
    # * * * * * your_command_or_script 

After entering your cronjob, exit by pressing 'escape', followed by:

:wq

You can check your set cronjobs with the command:

crontab -l
    

In this article we showed how to create a cronjob.

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