Cronjobs

[wtaguess]

Hi every one,

i have a couple of questions about crons.

1) How can i setup a cronjob? (not the sintax, but the place in x10 panel where to put it)

2) I've read in free hosting crons cannot request external content (i think like file_get_contents)...but can i call a page on another server? So for example using a redirect?

Thanks a lot for support

 

[wtaguess]

Hi,

today when i try to login to my control panel i obtain this error:

[h=1]This website is offline[/h]No cached version is available
Why?

Yesterday i've try to setup a cron job, only for test...the idea is to run it every hour at .38, and the php code is to fopen a txt (create it if not) and fwrite a test string....but nothing happen, maybe i've some error in my code.

I'm waiting for some response, thanks a lot

 

[essellar]

Most of us (Free Hosting support is primarily a volunteer effort) don't have the access to look at your account, check logs, and so forth. That's not an answer to your problem, of course, but it may help with the "why isn't anybody responding" part. As for the initial question, you can get external data and use external APIs, etc., using cURL, but you're pretty much limited to HTTP (port 80) and you'll want to make sure your script doesn't look or act too much like a content scraper. Oh, and it's doubtful that evalling arbitrary external sources is going to pass the sniff test should anyone check (keep in mind that activity on any one account can result in a server with thousands of accounts on it being blacklisted, added to malware protection lists, delisted from search engines, etc., so admins are pretty proactive).

 

[Skizzerz]

To note, cron jobs are not allowed to make HTTP requests to external content (e.g. something other than your website) as per the Free Hosting Terms of Service. You can make an HTTP request via a cron job to your own website to do stuff like run scheduled tasks, etc., but you may not use them to connect to other servers.

 

[essellar]

By the way, that restriction on cron jobs is new (like in the past couple of days new). That's what happens when children can't play nice with their toys — everybody loses.

 

[gameaddict2085]

Is that restriction also in place on illuminated and premium?

 

[essellar]

The restrictions do not apply to Premium (as of this writing), although content scraping would be prohibited under a number of clauses (and could end up costing a whack of money in admin surcharges if it results in blacklisting or search delisting/rank penalties for x10Premium-hosted accounts). Illuminated, on the other hand, is a special case of Free Hosting with greater resources and fewer technical limitations; the Free Hosting Terms of Service would still apply.

 

[gameaddict2085]

So would I be correct in saying that the following WOULD NOT be allowed:
My site collects links off users and stores them in a large database. Using CRON to check the pagerank and HTML status code of the links (Assuming that CRON doesn't take longer than the time limit)

 

[Skizzerz]

Can you elaborate on the purpose of it?

 

[gameaddict2085]

Ok my site collects a large amount of links and download links from users (http://thefreegamesdb.com), most of them moderated at time of adding. I want the CRON to check pagerank and google malware site database of the links (probably around 10 a day) and add the result to my database. I also want it to check the HTML status code of the links to make sure it is 200 OK.
This will then be used to flag broken links/unsafe links for updating/removal. And also the pagerank will be displayed next to links to assure users of the sites safety as well as 'safe website' if it passes googles malware index.

 

[Skizzerz]

That sounds fine, provided such automated queries are allowed by Google's Terms of Use (I know they forbid making automatic searches, I have not checked into automatically checking pagerank/malware)