Cron jobs are scheduled tasks, which are executed on regular intervals of time set by the user and they also execute scripts written in numerous programming languages - PHP, Perl, Bash, and the like. Depending on what actually a cron needs to do, it may run each and every minute, once a week or perhaps once per year. There are many practical applications to employ cron jobs in the everyday management of a site. For instance, a backup copy of the full site may be generated once per day or maybe weekly or an e-mail with all of the recent signups for the day may be sent to a certain e-mail. This kind of automated options will make the administration of any site faster and easier. There are no particular file types which are allowed / forbidden, so every script can be executed by using a cron job.
Cron Jobs in Shared Web Hosting
The Hepsia Control Panel, which comes with all of the Linux shared web hosting packages, allows you to set up cron jobs in a few basic steps even if you haven't ever employed this type of feature before. Once you log in and navigate to the Cron Jobs area where you'll be able to assign background tasks, you just have to paste the server access path to PHP, Perl or Python based on the script you'll execute, type the path inside of your account to the specific script file and select how often your cron job has to be carried out. For the latter, you can use the standard mode and pick the minutes, hours, days, etc. via simple drop-down navigation, or in case you are more experienced, you can use the advanced mode and specify the time period with numbers and asterisks i.e. the standard method that you may have employed with other Control Panels.