Running scripts on certain time

[blinkk]

Here is the dilema I am faced with:
My index page has a lot of content that requires a lot of server time. It involves searching hundreds of songs and finding the top that have been downloaded and listing them and bla bla. Instead of running the query each time someone visits the site, I run it every day and keep the results in the DB so my index can get it from there instead of doing multiple searches for different parts of the content.

I however cannot run the script every single day. Is there a way that the script can run its self every day, hour, whatever, without someone running it? I figured if there is no way I can store the time it was last changed, and compare it to the time now, and once it is over 24 hours or whatever, it changes the proper things.

Is there a way that I can make a script run every so many hours instead of having someone there accessing it every day, or putting the strain on some random user who access the index on that certain time?

[csk8er59]

This is a job for cron jobs.They're a little confusing so you might want to google it rather than listen to my horrible explanation of them 🙂

[bubblenut]

On a *nix box you can use cron. What OS is your server running?

[blinkk]

Linux

[bubblenut]

Cron's the way forward then, google for crontab tutorial and see what comes up.

[blinkk]

Thanks,
BTW do you think it is worth it to do all this? Does it take a lot of recource away from the DB? Thanks in advance while i google

[RESOLVED] I just found Cron manager in my Cpanel and found how to execute the stuff.. thanks for the help

[ps2gamer]

i also have something my cpanel, but how do i make it run php scripts?? i tried google searches and nothing

[csk8er59]

ps2gamer:You upload the script to your server.You then set the cronjob manager to execute the script at a certain time.Check with your host if you're still having trouble because as I said before,I'm not good at explaining things.