It might be called a bot, but I'm not sure.

[JesseBarksdale]

Hello,

BASICALLY, what I need is a way to run a .php file from my server. Is there some way to have a .php file execute once an hour, or once a minute, or something like that without having a browser open to execute it? I am using this for various data clearing, and would just like to know in general. I imagine spammers have some system set up like this where their servers automatically send emails all the time no matter what they are doing... Although that is far from what I am using this for, I just thought it would be a good example!

Thanks in advance!

- Jesse

[janharders]

What you need is a cronjob. That's a program that is run at specific times (once a day, once a week, every hour at 6,16 and 46 minutes etc...) and use a command line webclient like wget to run a script on your server.
There are services (I think some a free but I haven't used any of them) that will give you cronjobs and call a script on your server at the times you defined.