Do I have to set up a cron job?

After installing the latest version I came upon the screen telling me to now set up a cron job. I did this in the past and man was my email overwhelmed with cron jobs! I know I can set up the frequency but my question is "Do I need a cron job at all?"

Not knowing a whole lot about this program or cron jobs I'm not sure what the answer is. I did do some research before posting here but I want to do the right thing.

Could someone please provide some guidance?

Thanks in advance,

RC

If you dont,

You will not be able to send/receive emails or process videos, which should be enough tot say that you need them :)

Thanks, that's exactly what I needed to know.

So the next questions becomes how often should I do it? Once a day? Twice a day? Twice a week?

Any suggestions. And this will be a community site.

I almost posted a sarcastic remark to this statement. LOL

I have mine set to run every minute, but its your choice. You have to realize that if you run it once a week, then if someone uploads a video, it could take a week to process. You should only receive cron emails if something actually processes (like a video) OR your daily periodic report or all processes.

That is up to you. The default is the cron runs once per minute and if nothing needs to be processed then it just simply exits. Unless an error occurs you are not supposed to receive email notifications every time cron runs.

Now here is a reason why cron should run as often as possible.

Cron processes uploaded videos as well as several other things. So lets say a member uploads a video, and you have cron set to run once per day then that member would have to wait an entire day before the video is processed and appears in their account.

Cron processes a lot of things, and it needs to run quite often. But it is up to you.

Hmmm, i type to slow i guess.

LOL.. Nah. I was waiting for something to run here at work and had some free time. :)

LOL, you know I didn't realize that until you said it but you had every reason to post something sarcastic! LOL

And thanks for the input guys. I now understand the reason cron exist and why it's important to have it set up for a minute (the default) and that's what I'll do.

Once again thanks for the input.

RC

Hi Guys,

Once again your information has been great and helpful.

One last question. I put this cron job into the cron area of my GoDaddy account. A simple cut and paste thing.

MAILTO=customer_service@robthemlmdoc.com

* * * * * cd /home/content/t/i/m/timandrob/html/mlmdoctor/mlm_doc_community/periodic; /usr/local/bin/php -q cron.php

Now I have attached a picture of the GoDaddy cron area for a reason. Yesterday everyone was saying the cron job script is setup by default to run every minute which makes sense now that I understand its purpose. But as you can see by the pic I've attached to this message I am not sure that is what the default setting is for my GoDaddy account.

Yeah I know I can call GoDaddy and I will if I have to. You guys are the experts and wanted to check with you first. If I understand the installation guide regarding cron jobs the ***** means the script will run every minute. Did I understand this correctly? If this is the case then I do not need to check with GoDaddy.

Any input?

And once again thanks for your input.

RC

Yes the ***** means every minute. I have heard of some hosts not allowing crons to run every minute and changing them to something else. Not sure why yours is showing hourly in the screenshot.

Thanks for the reply. At least I understood the **** part of the installation guide. I will now call GoDaddy since I now know what the ***** stand for and what the account is showing. Once again thanks for your help.

RC

Hey... Watch the *****ing language.  :)

Had to.  :)