CronJobs For Jevents - non Technical Explation

JEvents and the club addons use Cronjobs/Scheduled tasks to perform various tasks on a periodic basis.

If you are unsure of how to set this up on your webhost and the following instructions are too complex then you can use one of the Free Online services(very bottom of this article) to load these webpages for you on the timetable you require.  But its highly likely that your hosting company will support crontab jobs/scheduled tasks.

For example:

• Importing iCal events from from Google (or another online calendar e.g. another JEvents installation)
• Sending out the notification emails for new or changed events (Notifications plugin)
• Sending out reminder emaild (RSVP Pro)

In all cases these scripts need to be run on a regular basis - importing icals would probably be once or twice a day and reminders and notifications every 5-10 minutes (depending on the number of events and users on your site).

These scripts can be run from a web browser using a URL e.g.

• http://www.yourdomain.com/index.php?option=com_jevents&icsid=20&task=icals.reload - to reload calendar number 20
• http://www.yourdomain.com/plugins/jevents/jevnotify/sendnotifications.php - to send notifications to users of new or changed events
• http://www.yourdomain.com/plugins/jevents/jevrsvppro/rsvppro/sendreminders.php to send out reminders for RSVP Pro

The configuration of this will look different on different webhosts but if you use CPanel then it will look like this



Once you click this icon you will see a screen like this:




To run a job every 5 minutes select this option from the "Common Settings" drop down and put this in the command field for sending notifications of new event (using your own domain of course!).

/usr/bin/curl -s http://www.mydomain.com/plugins/jevents/jevnotify/sendnotifications.php" > /dev/null 2>&1

then click "Add New Cron Job" [Change the URL to match the task you want to repeat (see above)]. 

Your list of current cronjobs will then  be updated to show the new job:

• For notes on the same exercise in Plesk see http://www.hosting.com/support/plesk/crontab

For windows hosting you should check your webhost help pages for advice.

Some WebHosts do not allow running cronjobs locally, so you can use one of the below services to run it for you. (We do not garuntee or endose any of the below services).

- SetCronJob - http://www.setcronjob.com/
You can create up to 10 cron jobs, running up to every five minutes. When the time matches your criteria, SetCronJob will call the URL given (script in PHP, ASP, JSP, etc, backup your files, databases, clear temporary files, send newsletters, etc).

- OnlineCronJobs - http://onlinecronjobs.com/
The purpose of this website is to allow website administrators without cronjob service on their own host, run cronjobs.

- CronMe - http://www.cronme.org/
Free web cron service is that enables you to setup your own crontabs with web interface and lets you to execute any URL on specified time/date.

- CronJobs.org - http://www.cronjobs.org/
The easy way to execute automatic tasks on your website.

- CronLess - http://www.cronless.com/
Cronless is a free cron job service. We provide free access to a simulated linux cron job, it does the same thing, just in a safer and easier method.