This tutorial will show you how to setup a cron job using Plesk 10 on a Linux VPS. Like cPanel, Plesk is a widely available hosting control panel, providing a GUI through which users can configure their hosting.

What is a cron job?

A cron job, also referred to as a 'scheduled task', is simply a command (e.g. go to a particular URL) which is executed at a specified time.

You may, for example, setup a cron job to access the URL of a PHP file (e.g. http://www.example.com/test.php) once every day. Accessing that PHP file could in turn run whatever code the file contained, and that code could then in turn initiate other tasks such as creating a database backup or clearing log files.

In short, cron jobs can be a useful way of performing, or initiating, (recurring) tasks.

So, let's get started...