This short video shows you how to create a cron job using the Dreamhost web panel that will allow you to execute cron on a Drupal site. As I have noted previously execution of the cron file is an important task for any Drupal site. Many modules rely on cron for periodic processing of data including the core search and aggregator modules. Running cron also prompts the system to check for module updates.
Here's what I entered in the video. Be sure to replace the url with url of your site. wget -qO /dev/null http://yoursite.com/cron.php
This video is one in a series of videos I created called Getting The Most Out Of Dreamhost. If you're a current Dreamhost customer you probably already know how to do things like set up a domain or create a MySQL database so it may not be relevant to you. If you're considering Dreamhost I think the series offers a very good preview of how the web panel functions make it easy to launch new Drupal sites. There's also a discount code (LEARNDRUPAL2010) on that page that will save you $50 on a new Dreamhost web hosting account.
Note: Click the 'full screen' icon (to the left of the volume control) in order to watch online at full 1280x720 resolution.
The cron feature in Drupal is an important Drupal feature that you should really get to know.
What Is Cron?
Cron is a php script that activates features that need to be run on a periodic basis. If you look at the files for the core install of Drupal you will notice a file called cron.php. That is the file you execute when you run cron.
Why You Should Use Cron
Cron allows you to take advantage of some other important Drupal features and modules. The core search module uses cron to to index the terms included in content nodes so that they will show up in the search results when users search for them. The automatic module and theme update notifications in Drupal 6 use cron to check drupal.org for updates. The core news aggregator uses cron to check for updated news feeds. Other contributed modules use cron as well.
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