Cron For Free Web Hosts

For those wondering, cron is a tool for the Unix system to run certain scripts at set times. This is something that many websites need , because there is code, like back up, that has to be run during a certain period. However if you are using a free web host, there is no way for you to automate this process, because they do not support cron jobs. This is where WebCron.org comes into play. It is a French website that allows you to specify an frequency and an URL that will be fetched automatically. If the said URL is a simple PHP script, the code in it will also be executed every time the file is downloaded.

WebCron.org a allows you to specify three URLs for free, which is more than what most web developers need. Their interface is also quite simple to use, and very efficient. It also can show you a history of your cron job, which means that you can see when it was successful, and when it failed.

I have been using this service for over a year now to fetch my comics automatically with my CronGrab service, and I never had any trouble with it. I also started to use it to for the post by email WordPress feature that I use on my Testing Blog. All I had to do was add a WebCron.org job that fetched http://test.krizka.net/wp-mail.php automatically every hour.