Blog

Tip: Cronless Can Schedule Tweets

November 16th, 2009

I found a great service called ScheduledTweets that works perfectly with Cronless–a scheduling service for your Twitter account.

Some info from the site:

—————

ScheduledTweets is built with PHP, uses MySQL to store the data & its interface is fully Ajaxed.

It enables you to define time-intervals which your tweets will be sent every x minutes. You can enter unlimited tweets, drag’n drop your tweets to change the order they will be sent.

Also, URL shortening service TinyURL is integrated for shorter tweets.

ScheduledTweets comes with a web-based friendly installer that helps you define database & Twitter information easily.

Why Use ScheduledTweets?

Twitter is both an instant messaging & a micro-blogging platform. You will probably not schedule your personal tweets (I won’t, as it clearly becomes meaningless) but if you are regularly sharing stuff on a subject, then it has the same benefit as scheduling a post on a blog.

Installation couldn’t be simpler:

Create a MySQL database & user
After downloading it, unzip the files to a folder & upload them to your hosting account
Run http://www.yourdomainname.com/scheduled-tweets-url/index.php
Define the MySQL database information you created in the first step. Also define your Twitter info and desired ScheduledTweets admin info
Click install
Setup a cron job to http://www.yourdomainname.com/inc/functions.php?getAction=cronTweet (the interval must be lower than your smallest interval defined in ScheduledTweets)
Click “Start ScheduledTweets” button at the top menu
That’s it

—————

I personally recommend using Cronless’ free cron jobs to schedule those tweets!

Tags: php, Tips, tweets
Posted in Tips | Comments Off

PHP Tip: How to Backup Your Database

November 11th, 2009

Here’s an easy script to use to backup your database. Copy the contents of this script on your site as DBBackup.php and then you can create a PHP Cron Job to run it from here, once a day!

<?
// Run until complete
set_timeout_length(0);

// DB connection parameters
$host = ‘localhost’; //enter YOUR server
$username = ‘username’; //enter YOUR username
$password = ‘password’; //change to YOUR password
$database = ‘database_name’; //update with your DB
$path = ‘/home/username/backups/’; //Your backup directory (must be writable!)

$filename = $database.‘_’.date(‘Y-m-d_H:i:s’).‘.gz’;
$backup = $path.$filename;

$backup_command = “mysqldump –opt -h $host -u $username -p $password $database | gzip > $backup”;

if(exec($backup_command)==” && file_exists($backup))
{
echo “Backup successfully executed”;
}
else
{
echo “Error creating backup”;
}
?>

There are more sophisticated ways to backup your database, one table at a time such as described in this article, but they haven’t been moved to PHP5 yet so I would suggest this for advanced users only.

A great way to use your free cron jobs.

Tags: database backup, Tips
Posted in Features, Tips | Comments Off

Eight Million Jobs!

November 6th, 2009

Cronless has now crossed the 8 million job threshold. That means Cronless has processed almost 1 job every 2 seconds for the past eight months straight!

Thanks for making Cronless a successful free cron job service!

Posted in News | Comments Off

Tweets for Job Failures

November 5th, 2009

Coming soon! A new feature will be available for you: The ability to receive TWEETS for Job failures.

And even better, you’ll be able to receive various IM notifications (Yahoo, GTalk, and AIM) in addition to MSN.

Just another reason to upgrade to Premium for Cronless.

Tags: im, premium, tweet
Posted in Features, News | Comments Off

Cronless moved to a new VPS

October 31st, 2009

The past week was a frustrating one for me. Cronless was bounced around inside my ISP to a new VPS server. The end result is all good now, but there was some time where emails were NOT going out notifying you about your jobs because of configuration changes. The jobs ran, but no notices appeared. My apologies to everyone for that. The problem has been fixed and we’re moving forward again.

Tags: downtime, email problem, vps
Posted in General, News | Comments Off

Tips Creating Your Jobs

October 15th, 2009

It’s quite possible that you may get timeouts when your PHP cron job runs. If that happens, place this at the top of your script

<?php
set_time_limit(0); //0 = run forever
?>

This will allow your script to run to completion, ignoring timeouts. Jobs executed here at Cronless are run under this directive, but your own web server may timeout if you fail to put that in as well!

If you find that this isn’t enough and you still get timeouts (some hosts are disabling this PHP function), you can help by limiting your script output as much as possible. (less than 4kb is ideal)

Tags: php, Tips
Posted in Features, News | Comments Off

Survey Says: Better Notifications

October 10th, 2009

Our recent survey has come back with some great feedback, including:

More options for notifications (GTalk, AIM, Yahoo)
Send emails with clear SUCCESS/FAILURE in title (for mobile users)
Update job setup to use a calendar widget instead of UNIX timestamp entry

Well, you spoke and we’re listening. These features are being implemented in the coming weeks. Keep your eye out for changes!

Tags: new features, survey
Posted in Features, News | Comments Off

Bug fixes, PayPal integration improved!

September 28th, 2009

Several minor bugs have been fixed, some small site tweaks have been done, and the PayPal integration has been vastly improved. We now have TWO levels of subscriptions you can sign up for:

$19/year gets you the Power Level, with 5 cron jobs executing as often as one/minute.

$27/year gets you the Pro Level with unlimited cron jobs and unlimited site monitoring.

You can also update your password after a system reset from the Settings tab.

Happy Cron Jobs!

Posted in Features, General, News | Comments Off

Cronless has a new look!

September 18th, 2009

Been working hard…Cronless now has a new look and feel, a logo, a feedback tab, and a new tour.

Let me know what you’d like to see with the Feedback tab on the right of every page on the site.

Happy cron-ing.

Posted in General, News | Comments Off

Time Zone Fix

September 4th, 2009

You will notice that I fixed the time zone problem, you will now see your jobs running time in your local time zone.

This does not effect the time the job will run, all jobs are based on PST/GMT -8!

Posted in Features | Comments Off