Autoscript

[stevelibby]

Hi
If i wanted the server to do something..anything at 12pm everyday, what technology would i use? I am familiar with asp.

[bill]

A cron job would work with a *nix/Apache machine. On a Windows IIS server you could use a scheduled task.

[stevelibby]

im on shared hosting, does this limit me ?

[jtara]

On a shared host you might not be able to use cron. You will have to check with your host on the technical details. In any case, how you do this is likely to be specific to your host.

Ultimately, you are not limited by using a shared host as long as you can use a scripting language.

Create a script that will perform the task you want to perform when you access a web page. If there is no output from the task, just have the page do the task and produce "Success". (Or an error message, etc.)

Then, on a Linux or Windows system at home, use cron or a Windows scheduler to hit the URL periodically.

Oh, you will probably want to password-protect the page.

If you want to get fancy, you can look into writing a "web service". But what I have outlined above is essentially that, albeit using an informal "protocol".