Configuration Of Cron Job For Many Domains

[Tim Buchalka]

Hi all,

We get this question from time to time as a support ticket, so figured it would make sense to post both the question and answer here for the benefit of all...

If you have a heap of domains hosted on the same site (each with their own subdirectory), how do I setup the cron job?

e.g. Let's say you have your normal public_html folder and your add on domains have a sub folder called domain1.com and domain2.com

So the path might look like this....

/home/tgb001/public_html
/home/tgb001/public_html/domain1.com
/home/tgb001/public_html/domain2.com

etc

So the question is, when setting up the cron job, where does the cron.php file go?

The answer is it goes anywhere you want a cron job to operate, once for each domain.

So if you have 1 domain you set it up once, if you have 100 domains, you set it up 100 times.

Set it up in the relevant folder for each domain.

We do it this way for two main reasons.

1. In case you do not want a cron job for a given domain.

2. To allow you to individually decide different cron settings for each domain.

3. Post schedule - If there was a single cron job and you had (say) 100 domains, then 100 domains would get processed for each cron job, and given that a cron job can only operate for a short period of time, would ultimately mean your posts would take a long long time to process.

4. Footprints - If you had multiple posts being processed from different domains at the exact same time, you are associating multiple domains with the one process, which could be a bad thing.

So in Summary, you need to create a cron job for each domain you wish to use cron with. Remember that the cron setting is really only useful for existing posts.

If you have a new domain and/or only want to process posts you create and publish from this point forwards, there is no need to use the cron process at all.

I hope this explains it.

Cheers


Tim

[IM_MERLIN]

Hi Tim,

Thanks for the info on how to set up multiple sites. I have set up 50 sites so far and each one has its own CRON setting. My sites average around 6000 posts each, however most of those posts are unpacked. I changed the config limit as in your video from 15 post to 150 posts. I then populated the schedule, most of the blogs reached close to 150 post on schedule.
My cron setting are set every 6 hours every day staggered for these sites. What I have found is that each one of my sites has already gone through the 150 initial old posts for the cron.

Am I submitting these to fast in your opinion or is it ok? When I repopulate the schedule does the software go and get 150 Different Posts to submit? Does it know how to do that?

Thanks for your Help and Have a Great Day,

Manny

[Tim Buchalka]

Hi Manny,

It's hard to say regarding the number of posts you are making. I will voice a concern about loading blogs with 6000 posts wondering just how useful this information is generally. If the content is of a high quality all should be ok but if it's low quality content you may be in trouble.

Of course the "proof" is in the pudding so to speak. If you are getting some good rankings and traffic then it's working well !

With that many posts it's likely someone will eventually start manually checking your feeds, so long as it's good quality and you are adding extra feeds to it, I suspect all will be ok.

The software does not repopulate at this time. May I suggest you put a suggestion to do this (and any other feature you think might be handy) in the thread below?

New Version Of Web Traffic Genius

Thanks


Tim

Hi Tim,

Thanks for the info on how to set up multiple sites. I have set up 50 sites so far and each one has its own CRON setting. My sites average around 6000 posts each, however most of those posts are unpacked. I changed the config limit as in your video from 15 post to 150 posts. I then populated the schedule, most of the blogs reached close to 150 post on schedule.
My cron setting are set every 6 hours every day staggered for these sites. What I have found is that each one of my sites has already gone through the 150 initial old posts for the cron.

Am I submitting these to fast in your opinion or is it ok? When I repopulate the schedule does the software go and get 150 Different Posts to submit? Does it know how to do that?

Thanks for your Help and Have a Great Day,

Manny

[globedrifter]

Hi Tim,

I also have an older blog with a couple of thousand posts and noticed that the cron job was finished after only one day of posting 52 feeds every 6 hours. How many posts does WTG accept/process?

Thanks // Marcel

[Tim Buchalka]

Marcel,

Web traffic genius would not process thousands of jobs in 6 hours. Most likely you have not changed the default count of 15. Every time you click Post Existing it only schedules 15 posts. You can make this a much larger number and this is shown in detail in the videos, so I suggest you take a look at that.

Alternatively just click Post existing again and it will schedule another group of posts.

Regards


Tim

Hi Tim,

I also have an older blog with a couple of thousand posts and noticed that the cron job was finished after only one day of posting 52 feeds every 6 hours. How many posts does WTG accept/process?

Thanks // Marcel

[glas]

I got a cron job set up to deliver 30 posts every six hours. The blog contains around 60 quality posts in English and all these posts are in the process of being translated into 20 other European languages resulting in over 1,000 posts 9 (I do business all over Europe)

One question: Will there be a problem in submitting non-English language feeds to the rss aggretator sites?

Another issue I have is that my cron job doesn't seem to be working for this site (it's hosted with Hostgator). I click 'Post Existing' but when I go to the schedule job page it is blank - "no entries found". When i go to the log page its shows no entries, sucess or failure, since 24 August, two days ago.

These are my config.php settings I changed:

// CRON
// How many aggregator sites the feed will submit to in one thread
define('SITE_NUMBER_PER_THREAD', 5);
// The interval in minutes of cron job
define('CRON_INTERVAL', 5);
// How many posts are selected when posting existing
define('POSTS_PER_CRON_JOB', 30);


What do you think has caused the cron job to stop working?

[brett]

If you've only got 60 posts, and you've scheduled them 30 at a time, then you will either need to click "Post existing" in your options at least one more time, or if you've already done that and all 60 posts have been submitted then your cron job work is done. It only converts each post (and submits it) once.

Regarding other languages. This post might assist: Question from Italy

[freshman]

I am going ahead with the cron feature. What is the cron command I need to use for the problem?

Do you think a future upgrade could automatically make the cron file and print the command?

[brett]

Hi there

When you tick the enable cron job box in the options page and save the options, another box will then appear on the options page with the code that needs to go into the cron file you create.

The command you need to enter into your cron scheduler is

php -q '/home/username/public_html/subfolder/wtgcron.php'

(or whatever the path to your cron file that you just created is)

Brett

[freshman]

Hi Brett,

Thanks for the reply. I am getting a "No input file specified." message using the following example:

php -q /home/iry0ja7n/public_html/mysite.com/wp-content/plugins/web-traffic-genius-pro/wtgcron.php

Should I be using

/usr/bin/php /home/iry0ja7n/public_html/mysite.com/wp-content/plugins/web-traffic-genius-pro/wtgcron.php

Or any other cron format?

Thanks.