Crontab is a utility tool on Unix-like OS that enables you to make a program daemon scheduled to run at a specified interval. For example, to fetch news feed and import them into your own database every hour on the hour or to send pre-written newsletters at a given time everyday.
With DreamHost you can easily add Crontab jobs at their proprietary web panel, but there are 2 tricks.
With PHP, you can specify the version to run the script, PHP4 or PHP5. DreamHost has both popular php versions installed at different locations:
/*PHP4: */
/usr/local/bin/php
/*PHP5: */
/usr/local/php5/bin/php
With any PHP script, you can always achieve the same results with lynx -dump command that accesses and loads the script as any other browsers would do, thus making the server run the script.
Also it’s required to add this line:
#!/usr/local/bin/php -q
at the top before <?php declaration if you are configuring crontab in command line mode rather than adding it from the web panel of DreamHost.
With DreamHost you can easily add Crontab jobs at their proprietary web panel, but there are 2 tricks.
With PHP, you can specify the version to run the script, PHP4 or PHP5. DreamHost has both popular php versions installed at different locations:
/*PHP4: */
/usr/local/bin/php
/*PHP5: */
/usr/local/php5/bin/php
With any PHP script, you can always achieve the same results with lynx -dump command that accesses and loads the script as any other browsers would do, thus making the server run the script.
Also it’s required to add this line:
#!/usr/local/bin/php -q
at the top before <?php declaration if you are configuring crontab in command line mode rather than adding it from the web panel of DreamHost.