Some web hosting companies alow you to run cron jobs. It is a daemon to execute scheduled commands. You can specify which program should be run at what time. It is useful for periodic updates of the index file.
In most cases, web hosting plans include some sort of control panel from witch you can set cron jobs. Usually you don't have to know anything about the syntax of the cron job. You have just to fill in desired fields: time of execution and program to run.
- Time of execution: It depends on how frequently your site changes. You may, for example, update the index once a day or once a week.
- Path to the updater: The automatic updater is placed in the directory where you've installed APB Search. Let's suppose it is /cgi-bin/APBSearch/ directory. If this is the case, type: perl /home/user/public_html/cgi-bin/APBSearch/cron.pl into appropriate field.
The format of a cron command (taken from manpages): Each line has five time and date fields, followed by a user name followed by a command. Commands are executed by cron when the minute, hour, and month of year fields match the current time, and when at least one of the two day fields (day of month, or day of week) match the current time.
The time and date fields are:
minute: 0-59
hour: 0-23
day of month: 1-32
month: 1-12 (or names)
day of week: 0-7
A field may be an asterisk (*), which always stands for ALL.
Examples:
- run five minutes after midnight, every day:
5 0 * * * perl /home/user/public_html/cgi-bin/APBSearch/cron.pl
- run at 2:15pm on the first of every month:
15 14 1 * * perl /home/user/public_html/cgi-bin/APBSearch/cron.pl
If you want to know more about the syntax of cron jobs, you can read one of the many online tutorials. Here are some of the best:
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