Cronless Blog

Scheduling 30 Second Cron Jobs

amgadhs — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 21:54:15 +0000

Today we released a new Cronless update that allows premium members to schedule cron jobs to run every 30 seconds (twice per minute.)

To make use of this feature create a new job or modify an existing one and just set the Interval to ‘Every 30 seconds’.

Our crontab importing feature will not support this feature because of the limitations in the UNIX/Linux cron formats.

Minor Interface Tweaks

amgadhs — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 07:55:32 +0000

We did some minor interface and settings tweaks this week:

Minimized the Server Load’s refresh counter to 15 seconds to display a more accurate number.
Reformatted the jobs and monitors log pages to easily read and analyze.
Moved the notification settings from Settings to its own page.
And last but not least, added a Date and Time Format setting to the Settings page.

Displaying The Translation Box

amgadhs — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 06:37:20 +0000

You can now show or hide the translation drop down list using the Display Translation Box option in the Settings page. The drop down list will be displayed at the top right corner of each page while logged in. The translation is powered by Google Translate and supports more than 50 languages.

Bug Fixes and Updates

amgadhs — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 12:00:22 +0000

A few members complained that cron jobs did not execute properly when the scripts being called printed specific HTML tags. This includes members using MailBeez. We fixed this and now the scripts being called will work properly regardless of its output. Other minor bug fixes are the date and time displayed in the jobs list and the Lost Password response page.

We also added sorting (by clicking on the column headers) to the jobs and monitors tables. And we fixed some design issues (press Ctrl + F5 to see it) like font size and margin settings.

Please let us know if you find anything out of sorts.

User Interface Updates

amgadhs — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 14:37:50 +0000

We did some tweaks and fixes to the website to improve its speed and usability. The most noticeable is the new homepage for logged in users. It now lists the account details and the latest news instead of the account types. Plus users now get redirected to the homepage when they log in and not the jobs page. And a link to the upgrade page was added to the menu in case you want to check it out

Please let us know what you think.

Cronless has a new host and new server

daver — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 18:44:42 +0000

The move has been completed and we’re back up, 100%. Downtime was minimized (approximately 10 min total) and all cron jobs have been transferred.

I’ve worked with a few people to deal with some minor bugs, but everything seems to be in place. Please let me know if you find anything out of sorts.

Cronless Moving to a New Server

daver — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 18:40:43 +0000

Cronless will be moving to a new VPS server shortly.

There has been difficulty with the reliability of mail and the DNS being blacklisted because this particular host seems to have some other less-than-desirable sites hosted there.

I will make the move in such a way that the jobs will be transferred, the site will be in “maintenance mode” preventing job changes for no more than 48 hours while the DNS change takes place.

Thanks for your patience.

Happy New Year from Cronless

daver — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 01:00:53 +0000

We hope you and your families have a prosperous, wonderful, safe and healthy New Year.

Thanks to everyone for all your support in 2009. We’re looking forward to a great 2010 with you and all the new folks who sign up for free cron jobs.

If you like our service, tell your friends to run their PHP cron jobs here too!

Hot Tips for your Cron Job PHP scripts

daver — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 13:00:02 +0000

Here are the best tips compiled into a single list for your convenience. Consider it the “Best of Cronless, 2009″.

Tip 1: When you save your cron job, Cronless will execute it to ensure that the script is reachable and online. This is to make sure Cronless has a good URL to use and that you entered the user/password correctly (if necessary). If you don’t want Cronless to run the script at that time, put this at the beginning of your script while saving the job:

exit;
?>

Tip 2: Don’t want to modify your script with Tip 1? OK, rename the script and put in a temporary script that does nothing using the same filename. Following these simple steps:

Rename your original script to something different (append “.ORIG” to the end, for example)
Make a new PHP file with the same filename as your original script. Make sure you put in the for proper execution.
Save your job on Cronless using the URL you want.
Move your original script with new suffix (.ORIG) back to the server with the correct filename.
Let Cronless do the rest!

Tip 3: If you have timeouts when running your script, make sure that you setup PHP to ignore the timeout value when running.

Tip 4: Using PHP to backup a database is very easy. Here’s a complete database backup script you can use.

Tip 5: Want to make sure your site is always online? Use Cronless’ Site Monitor feature when you upgrade to Webmaster Pro. We now have filters to ensure you only get critical failures and not false alarms.

Tip 6: Want to schedule some tweets? Here’s a great way to do that using Cronless.

Eight Crazy Ways To Notify You

daver — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 19:46:30 +0000

Cronless now has eight ways to notify you when your free cron jobs are executing:

Email (default)
SMS
IM (MSN, Yahoo, GTalk and AIM)
Twitter

In addition, site monitoring now has the ability to override the notification, so you can just watch your sites without being notified, or only get notified after 5, 10, or 15 consecutive failures. That way you get only the serious failures and not the random network glitches that cause false alarms.

Take the new cron job tour and find out why Cronless is the best service out there.