Is there a way to have the php code count down real-time seconds? So say I want it to count from 60 seconds...is there a way to tell it count 60 seconds down to zero, using real time? ...not depedant on the server's time hopefully... Thanks!
No. PHP is client side and once parsed you can't do anything anymore. It's static in that regard. You'll need something client side like JavaScript.
but you can use Javascript and it's settimeout function as a clientside "looper" to display a countdown. (see the javascript portion of the forum here) you can even integrate what the javascript counts down from by modifying the javascript variables with PHP
Or you could do it in Flash. Easier to control the look of the timer. PHP could also be used to set a cookie and trigger the timer's start relative to the last time the visitor was cookied on your site.
I'll let you guys tell me which method is best... Basically, I found open source php code that pings a website of my choice one time and returns the result to the php page for displaying it. I then added a function that if the site returns a value of 'offline', it will send a smtp message to my sprint phone. I would like this to be able to run either as a timed function, such as hourly, or as a service...hourly... How do you guys think I should go about doing this? Or do I need to go at it a different approach? Thanks!