DEV Community: FasterHost

How to Set Up a Cron Job in cPanel (and Run WP-Cron and Laravel's Scheduler Properly)

Fasterhost — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 09:20:56 +0000

First published in the FasterHost knowledge base. FasterHost is an Indian web host; the steps use cPanel's standard Cron Jobs page.

A cron job runs a command on a schedule: process a mail queue every five minutes, clear old files at night, run Laravel's scheduler, or replace WordPress's visitor-triggered cron with a real one. On a cPanel account you add one from a form, without editing a crontab by hand.

When a cron job "doesn't run", it has usually run and failed. Cron starts in your home directory with a minimal environment, not the one your shell has, and most of what follows is about not tripping over that.

The schedule: five fields

┌──────────── minute        (0–59)
│ ┌────────── hour          (0–23)
│ │ ┌──────── day of month  (1–31)
│ │ │ ┌────── month         (1–12)
│ │ │ │ ┌──── day of week   (0–6, 0 = Sunday)
│ │ │ │ │
*/5 * * * *   command

* means "every" and */5 means "every fifth". Ready to copy:

*/5 * * * *    every 5 minutes
*/15 * * * *   every 15 minutes
0 * * * *      every hour, on the hour
30 2 * * *     every day at 2:30 am, server time
0 6 * * 1      every Monday at 6 am
0 0 1 * *      at midnight on the 1st of each month

Cron runs on the server's clock, which may not be your time zone. Run date in a terminal on the server before you schedule anything for a particular hour.

Adding the job in cPanel

Open Cron Jobs. In cPanel, go to Advanced → Cron Jobs. The Cron Email box at the top is where the output of every job is sent. Clear it to stop all of those emails, or silence jobs one at a time (step 4).
Choose when it runs. Under Add New Cron Job, pick a schedule from Common Settings, for example Once Per Five Minutes. It fills in the five fields for you: Minute, Hour, Day, Month and Weekday. You can also type them yourself from the list above.
Write the command with full paths. Spell every path out. To run a PHP script (replace cpuser with your cPanel username):

   /usr/local/bin/php /home/cpuser/public_html/cron.php

To call a URL instead:

   curl -s https://example.in/tasks/run

Run the exact command in a terminal first (cPanel's Advanced → Terminal, or SSH; both need shell access, which not every hosting plan includes). If it fails there, it will fail in cron, where you can't see the error.

Silence it or keep a log. Each run's output is emailed to the Cron Email address, which adds up quickly for a job that runs every five minutes. Append this to discard it:

   >/dev/null 2>&1

Or append it to a log file you can read later. Create the logs folder first:

   /usr/local/bin/php /home/cpuser/public_html/cron.php >> /home/cpuser/logs/cron.log 2>&1

Add it and check it ran. Click Add New Cron Job. It appears under Current Cron Jobs, where you can edit or delete it. After the next scheduled time, read the log file or the email.

Leave enough time between runs for the job to finish. The server starts the next run on schedule even if the last one is still going.

One character to escape: `%`

In a crontab line, cron turns an unescaped % into a newline and hands everything after it to the command as input (crontab(5)). So a command that works in your terminal, such as one that names its log file after the date, gets cut short under cron. Put a backslash before each %:

/usr/local/bin/php /home/cpuser/public_html/cron.php >> /home/cpuser/logs/cron-$(date +\%F).log 2>&1

Real cron for WordPress

WordPress runs its scheduled tasks only when someone visits the site. On a quiet site a scheduled post can go out late; on a busy one the check runs far more often than it needs to. Turn the visitor trigger off in wp-config.php, above the line that says to stop editing:

define('DISABLE_WP_CRON', true);

Then add a cron job every five minutes (*/5 * * * *), changing the folder if WordPress isn't in public_html:

cd /home/cpuser/public_html && /usr/local/bin/php wp-cron.php >/dev/null 2>&1

Do both. With DISABLE_WP_CRON set and no cron job behind it, nothing runs WordPress's scheduled tasks at all.

Laravel's scheduler

Laravel expects its scheduler to be called every minute, so the schedule is * * * * *:

cd /home/cpuser/app && /usr/local/bin/php artisan schedule:run >/dev/null 2>&1

Your tasks keep their own frequencies inside the app; this one cron entry wakes the scheduler, and Laravel runs whichever tasks are due.

Quick answers

Why is my cron job not running? Most often a path problem: cron starts in your home directory with a minimal environment, so use full paths to PHP and to the script. Run the exact command in a terminal first, and read the job's email or log for the error.

Which time zone does cron use? The server's clock. date shows it; adjust the hour if it differs from yours.

How do I stop cron job emails? Clear the Cron Email address to stop all of them, or end a single job's command with >/dev/null 2>&1.

How to Redirect a Domain or Page in cPanel (and Why the Redirect Does Nothing on WordPress)

Fasterhost — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 09:05:11 +0000

First published in the FasterHost knowledge base. FasterHost is an Indian web host; the steps use cPanel's standard Redirects page.

A redirect sends visitors, and search engines, from an old address to a new one: a page moved, the site changed domains, or a second domain should land on the main site. With a permanent (301) redirect, search engines pass the old address's ranking to the new one. cPanel sets one up from a single form. The catch comes on WordPress sites, where a redirect you added in cPanel can do nothing at all, and the reason is the order of the rules in .htaccess.

Setting it up

Open Redirects. In cPanel, go to Domains → Redirects.
Choose the type. Permanent (301) for a move you will not undo: a renamed page, a new domain, two sites merged into one. Temporary (302) only when the original address will come back, such as a page taken down during a sale.
Choose what to redirect. Select the domain from the list, or All Public Domains for every domain on the account. In the / box, type the rest of the old address, for example old-page.html. Leave it empty to redirect the whole domain.
Enter the destination and the options. In Redirects to, type the full new address including https://; cPanel requires the protocol. Under www. redirection, Redirect with or without www. suits almost every site. When you move a whole domain, tick Wild Card Redirect: it sends each page to the same path on the new domain, so old.in/about lands on new.in/about rather than on the home page.
Add it and test it. Click Add, then open the old address in a private browser window. To see exactly what the server answers:

   curl -I https://example.in/old-page.html

You should see a 301 status and a Location header with the new address.

One quirk: a redirect cannot be edited in place. To change one, delete it from the list and add it again.

Redirects that do nothing on WordPress

You add the redirect, test the old URL, and get WordPress's own page instead, often a 404. The redirect is there; it just never runs.

cPanel writes its redirect rules at the bottom of the site's .htaccess file, below WordPress's own rules. WordPress's block (its standard .htaccess) ends by handing every address that isn't a real file or folder, which on WordPress means every post and page, to index.php. So WordPress catches the request first and the rules underneath never get a turn. A current WordPress install writes the block like this (its comment lines left out):

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization}]
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

# ...the redirect lines cPanel added end up down here

The fix: open .htaccess in File Manager (switch on hidden files in its Settings; this File Manager guide shows where) and move the lines cPanel added, the ones naming your old address, above the line # BEGIN WordPress. Then run the curl -I check again.

If you have many redirects, manage them inside WordPress instead, with a plugin such as Redirection. That avoids editing .htaccess by hand.

Moving a whole site to a new domain

Redirect every page to its equivalent with a wildcard 301, not everything to the home page.
Keep the old domain registered and redirecting for at least a year; Google's advice is to keep redirects for as long as you can.
Tell Google with the Change of Address tool in Search Console, and update your own internal links to the new domain.
HTTP to HTTPS is a different job, and not one for the Redirects page: switch on Force HTTPS Redirect for the domain under Domains. It covers every page of the domain at once.

Quick answers

301 or 302? 301 for anything permanent: a moved page, a new domain, a merged site. Search engines then index the new address in place of the old one. Use 302 only when the original address will come back.

How do I redirect a whole domain to another domain? In Domains → Redirects: Permanent (301), select the old domain, leave the path empty, enter the new domain with https://, choose Redirect with or without www. and tick Wild Card Redirect so each page goes to the same path on the new domain.

How do I edit a redirect? You can't change one in place. Delete it from the list and add it again with the new values.

DEV Community: FasterHost

How to Set Up a Cron Job in cPanel (and Run WP-Cron and Laravel's Scheduler Properly)

The schedule: five fields

Adding the job in cPanel

One character to escape: %

Real cron for WordPress

Laravel's scheduler

Quick answers

How to Redirect a Domain or Page in cPanel (and Why the Redirect Does Nothing on WordPress)

Setting it up

Redirects that do nothing on WordPress

Moving a whole site to a new domain

Quick answers

One character to escape: `%`