Cron jobs

A cron job is a request to an address on one of your sites that we make on a schedule. It is for applications' background jobs or a script of your own. Manage them under "Hosting" → "Cron jobs".

Adding one

1. Choose the site: the main domain or a subdomain.
2. Enter the path on the site, for example /wp-cron.php or /cron.php?key=secret. The path starts with /. Only an address on your own site can be called.
3. Choose how often: every 5, 15 or 30 minutes, every hour, or every day at a chosen time.

The time for daily jobs is in UTC.

A new job runs for the first time in its next slot. For example, a job "every 5 minutes" added at 10:02 starts at 10:05.

How it runs

The request is made like an ordinary visit to the site, over https if the site has a certificate. The script gets 5 minutes at most. Redirects aren't followed.

The list shows when the job last ran, the HTTP answer and how long it took:

• green (e.g. 200): done;
• red (e.g. 500): the script returned an error;
• "no answer": the site didn't answer in time, or at all. Hover over it to see why.

If the script shouldn't be callable by anyone, add a secret parameter (?key=...) and check it in the script.

Applications installed from the panel

When you install WordPress, Nextcloud or OpenCart from the panel (Applications), the job for their background tasks is created automatically and goes away with the application. It is marked with the application's name in the list:

• WordPress: /wp-cron.php every 5 minutes. The built-in run on visits is turned off (DISABLE_WP_CRON in wp-config.php).
• Nextcloud: /cron.php every 5 minutes.
• OpenCart: /cron.php every hour.

Joomla and Drupal run their tasks on visits, and PrestaShop has no background tasks - they need no such job.

If you uploaded WordPress yourself, you can do the same: add a job /wp-cron.php every 5 or 15 minutes and define( 'DISABLE_WP_CRON', true ); in wp-config.php.

You can have up to 10 cron jobs. A suspended hosting runs none.