By flexy123 on
I did NOT get any wiser reading around on cron here on the site.
I understand the basics what cron is - but i lack serious documentation whether drupal has its own cron jobgs running already - or whether we have to run cron manually for certain tasks to complete.
Eg. specifically...the ping module which pings various sites..requires cron...but then how often do i run cron...etc..etc. ?
The only docu i read about it was a short text describing how to setup a cron job on a win machine, fetching the www.mysite.com/cron.php remotely.....but this just seems odd to do it like that.
Short: Cron-jobs ?! How, and how often ? Eg. for pinging, sitemaps update etc...
thanks !
Comments
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cron how often?
Depends on how often you want your site updated. Search also uses cron to index new content. Watchdog uses cron to clear old messages. I personally run cron twice an hour , every hour. The busier yoru site is the more you may want to run it to keep content current. so on so forth.
Therefore this is totally dependant on you and how often you want cron to run. Drupal truly doesn't care how often its run. With regards to how to set up cron, this is done on your server not with in drupal. And you point your cron job at cron.php in your drupal root.
how to set up the cron job
OK so I managed to set-up cron job on my server. For any others who do not have the tech wherewithal (like myself), it goes something like this.
-on a shared server hosting package.
-using cpanel (an interface with loadsa commands to help adminster your site).
<-----note: the following way to set up the Cron job applies to CPanel, but the GET command itself is is a general Linux/Unix thing so there are other ways to do it,---->
-choose Cron Job (from the list of all those commands in the Advanced section at the botton)
and to translate the above comment about 'point your job to cron.php' (thanks for the above comment by the way), It worked for me with the command:
GET http://www.{mywebsite}/drupal/cron.php
NB: I have a password set on the folder in the site **note this is not the same as the drupal login password, this is something I set on the server with cpanel, and nothing to do with drupal installation itself** .
So I had to vary the command thus to get access to my drupal folder on the server:
GET http://{user}:{pass}@www.{mywebsite}/drupal/cron.php
You can set the frequency of the cron jobs, with the (complicated looking, but simple actually) choices available in the 'standard' view in Cpanel. This is a simplified method but the actual GET command and full 'nix syntax differs, but the basic concept is the GET/yourwebsitewheredrupalinstalled/drupal/cron.php
If using Cpanel, then this link to cpanel will give more info: http://www.cpanel.net/support/docs/11/cpanel/advanced_cron_jobs.html
If using something else , then I guess there is relevant guidance there too.
If you're feeling brave then more information about the GET command here:
http://linux.about.com/library/cmd/blcmdl1_GET.htm
There may be other ways to do all this, but I found this worked for me on the Mailserver module.
Good Luck