Step 5: Set up a Cron Task

Cron Tasks

There are many tutorials on the Drupal website on how to set up a Cron task, but since this is supposed to be a "complete" tutorial, I will walk you through on how I acheived this with my CirtexHosting account.

The first task you will need to do is to actually log onto your Cpanel for your hosted account. I am able to do this by typing the the url of your website in your browser followed imediately by /cpanel. Of course, you will need to provide you account name and passoword to access this section, but this is given to you when you sign up for an account. Once you are in your Cpanel for your hosted account, you will need to find the section that says Advanced, and sure enough, in that section you will want to click on the link that says Cron Jobs.

From there you will be given two choices, Standard or Advanced. Honestly, I really don't know why they did this because as far as I am concerned the Advanced way of doing this is SOOOO much easier, so click on Advanced. Once you are in the actual cron page, the first thing you will want to look at is the Command text field. In that box, put the following comand /usr/bin/lynx http://www.mywebsite.com/cron.php (there is a space between /usr/bin/lynx and the url), but of course replace the www.mywebsite.com with whatever YOUR website URL. I don't want anybody ticking off the owner of www.mywebsite.com... :)

Next you will need to tell the Cron Jobs how often you would like to run a Cron task. Well, this is all dependant on you. If you would like to run your video conversions every 5 minutes (like me), then you would put a */5 in the Minute box, and put an "*" wildcard in all the other boxes. If you want every hour, then you would put a */1 in the Hour box, and an "*" in all others.

Now, if you were not able to get this working for your install (such as if you are not using CirtexHosting), you can still set up a cron task fairly easily using the wonderful module called Poormans Cron. What this module does is simply mimics the Cron cycle that you would normally set up with your hosting company. If you are one of those people who this applies too, then I would also recommend looking into this solution.... So, now do you see how this works? It's not really that complicated. Let's move on to the next step.

• Step 1: Get FFMPEG
• Step 2: Set up your php.ini file for FlashVideo
• Step 3: Get the FlashVideo Module
• Step 4: Download Joroen Wijering's Flash Player
• Step 5: Set up a Cron Task   <-- You are here!
• Step 6: Create a Content Template.
• Step 7: Create your Page!
• Troubleshooting the FlashVideo Module