Hello, I need a page on my web to be executed about every 2-3 minutes. My host does not allow Crons. Does anyone know of a good alternative?
If you have an "always" on Internet connection, you could setup a cron/schedule job on your home computer to make the HTTP request to your script every few minutes.
It's been a long time since I've done it on Windows, but if I recall, type at //help on the Command Prompt and it will give you the syntax for setting it up. You can use wget or curl as the mechanism to make the actual HTTP request.
I remember a long time ago when I was in the same boat I setup the script (php) I wanted executed and required that script as part of another PHP page that would get traffic about every five minutes. A very poor way to do it but it worked for my needs.
If the computer is local where the script is; you can just set up a scheduled task in windows. I run a script every hour that way, but I've seen settings that go as low as a minute or so - just don't need anything to run that often.
You could also do something like: "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" http://www.somesite.com/page.php to make the HTTP request. The only problem is that it leaves an open explorer window.
you could make it a batch file and close the window after x seconds too I think I'm sure there is a shell command to close iexplore.exe
Most easy way is to use another computers cron job. Can be your own if you are set up with ADSL/SDSL. and just access it remotely # crontab -e */3 * * * * lynx -dump "http://whatever .... " > /dev/null you can set up any old PC (486+) as a local Linux server doing this task.
Maybe Fake Cron : www.smarterscripts.com/cron/ will work for you. This is not as good as Shawns suggestion because it is based on the number of visitors to your site.