WebBasedCron Blog

Hi everyone,

Last night we flipped a switch to improve the long-term stability of the WebBasedCron architecture. To make a long story short we moved cron job execution, the database and the web server on to separate boxes. Some of you may have experienced a few hiccups - but everything should be running smoothly now. If you are experiencing any issues please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Thanks,
George
WebBasedCron

Update: 7:30pm EST WebBasedCron is back to normal.

Hi everyone,

Our infrastructure hosting provider is currently experiencing problems since 5:30pm EST. They are working on the problem and WebBasedCron should be back up shortly. I will update this post when WebBasedCron is back up. (7:30pm EST) Everything is back to normal.

My apologies for any trouble,
George
WebBasedCron

Hi everyone,

Some of you may have experienced some down time this afternoon from approximately 4:30pm to 7:00pm EST. The issue has been resolved and everything is back to normal.

Sorry for any trouble,
George
WebBasedCron

Hi everyone,

In the post below, I wrote about how our email notification system is changing. Instead of sending email notifications for cron job failures and successful executions, we have now rolled out the first phase of our RSS feeds to keep track of your account. This single RSS feed will give an overview of your account.

If you login to your account, you will see the following RSS image: This will give you the RSS Feed for your account. You can use this Feed to view up to the second information about your cron jobs including last successful execution and the number of time it’s failed.

We are thinking through how to evolve this feed to include perhaps the last 5 successful cron job execution times. If you have any thoughts or comments please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Thanks,
George
WebBasedCron

Hi everyone,

Update (Apr. 10 5:20pm EST): RSS Feeds are now active.

As of right now, a WebBasedCron user will receive an email if one of the following 3 things happen:

1. When they register WebBasedCron will send an email asking to verify the email address
2. Every 5 failures the user will receive an email notifying them that their cron job failed
3. The user can set the cron job to email them on every successful execution

As WebBasedCron has grown we have been increasingly sending out a substantial number of emails that many relay services could misinterpret as spam. This is completely understandable and from our end (WebBasedCron) a better solution needs to be implemented to ensure we scale properly.

Over the next couple days we will be implementing the following changes:

1. No emails will be sent out for cron job failures. The only email sent out will be when the cron job is shut off because it surpassed its maximum allowed failures.
2. A user will not have the option to receive email notifications of each successful execution.
3. Every user will now have an RSS feed that they can subscribe to that will give them up to the second information about their cron jobs.

You will be able to subscribe to this RSS feed and see, for example, the recent cron job execution times and the number of failures. Even if you don’t use an RSS reader, most browsers like Fire Fox and Internet Explorer parse RSS feeds and present the content in a readable format. So just bookmark the URL and view it at your convenience.

I understand that for some of you this means more work to watch and maintain your cron jobs, but this change will ensure WebBasedCron scales and continues to provide world-class cron job support.

More info is coming.

Thanks,
George
WebBasedCron

Hi everyone,

WebBasedCron was down intermittently for a period of about 20 minutes today from about 4:20pm to 4:40pm EST. The issue has been resolved and everything is back to normal.

Sorry for any trouble,
George
WebBasedCron

Hi everyone,

This past November we celebrated our 3rd birthday. Thank you to all our loyal customers and we look forward to serving you in the years to come.

Happy Holidays,
George
WebBasedCron

Hi everyone,

Some of you may have experienced your cron jobs failing to execute this evening (Sunday) during 7:00pm to 10:00pm EST. The problem has been corrected and everything should be back to normal.

Thanks,
George
WebBasedCron

Hi everyone,

The default setup on WebBasedCron is to send you a failure notification email for every 5 times your cron job fails. Up to today, this number was hard coded and users who’s cron jobs were prone to failing would receive large amounts of email notifications. We can now change this number to whatever you like, the minimum is still 5, but if your cron job fails often we would be more than happy to increase this number. Just open a support ticket and we’ll change it for you.

Thanks,
George
WebBasedCron

Update: As many things in life, the upgrade did not go as smoothly as I had initially expected. Some of you may have experienced intermittent slowdowns or a few cron jobs not running during this time. I apologize for any problems. All changes have been made and everything should be back to normal. If any of you have problems, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Hi everyone,

We will be performing a quick upgrade on our server today at 6:00pm EST.
The upgrade should take no more than 15 minutes.

Thank you,
George
WebBasedCron