How to Setup a Cron Job in Godaddy WordPress Hosting Using SSH

You may be wondering how to set up a Cron job in your WordPress hosting account. You’ve probably heard of a “Cron job” and maybe even thought about trying one out for yourself, but may not know how exactly it works or how to go about setting one up on your own web host. In this blog post, we’ll discuss how to set up a Cron job in your WordPress hosting account using the command line (via SSH) and show you how to test it out so you can be sure it’s working correctly.

What is a Cron job and why would I want one?

A Cron job is a scheduled task that’s executed in the background and often times on a set time each week. Typically, you wouldn’t want to run a Cron job every day as it could end up causing problems for your website, especially if it’s a big one. If you’re looking to use a Cron job, it’s a good idea to try and find one that is executed at the end of the day so that it has enough time to finish without affecting the performance of your site.

What’s important to note about Cron jobs is that they will always execute your tasks and won’t break under any circumstances. If you have a scheduled task that you know will take a while to run (such as a large data backup), you can use the optional wp-cron.php script to have it run every minute so that it doesn’t stop due to timeout issues.

How do I set up a Cron Job in WordPress hosting?

There are three basic steps you need to follow in order to set up a Cron job in your WordPress host:

1. Open up a SSH connection to your server. Choose a secure key (such as a 2048 bit RSA private key) to use for authentication. Make sure you use a key that’s been approved for use on your server.

2. Create a new user with the same name as your WordPress account. Give this user the permissions to access the cron.php script.

3. Go into your WordPress dashboard and navigate to the Cron tab. From here, you can input the schedule you want the Cron job to run on and create a new one quickly and easily.

Once you’ve followed these steps, you’ll be able to use the Cron job effectively to run backups, clean URLs, and install new WordPress themes and plugins without having to do it manually.

Keep in mind that if you’ve configured a wild card SSL certificate for your site and have enabled path-based match on your own domain, you’ll need to create a separate subdomain for the Cron site so that there is no conflict with your main domain. To test out your Cron site, you can use a free service like my.handcraftedamerica.com and insert the following code into the designated area:

<?php if ( defined( ‘WP_HOME’ ) && WP_HOME === ‘/’ ) {
define( ‘WP_HOME’, ‘http://my.domain.com/’ );
}
?>

This is how you can test whether or not your Cron site is working correctly. Just visit this URL at a time when you know your site isn’t going to be accessed (such as between 10PM and 6AM) and see if the page loads successfully. If it does, then you know that your Cron job is set up correctly.

Why would I need to create a new user for the Cron site?

You can allow any user to access the cron.php script using WordPress’s built-in permissions system, however, if you want to add another user specifically for this task (to avoid any accidental interference from the original author), then you’ll need to create a new user specifically for this task.

Where do I store my private key?

As mentioned previously, you’ll need to store a private key somewhere on your server. This key is used to connect to your server during the SSH process. You can put it in a safe place on your server, create a dedicated folder for it, or even store it somewhere encrypted (such as in a WordPress plugin).