Introduction

Automating routine tasks is a critical part of managing a website efficiently. Whether it’s running scripts for backups, sending out scheduled reports, cleaning up temporary files, or triggering notifications, cron jobs allow you to schedule commands to run automatically at specified intervals.

Plesk makes it easy to create and manage cron jobs (also called scheduled tasks), even if you don’t have extensive server knowledge. Through its intuitive interface, you can define when, how often, and which scripts to run, saving you time and ensuring your website stays functional and optimized.

In this tutorial, we’ll walk you through the process of creating, configuring, and managing cron jobs for your website in Plesk.

Let’s get started!

Accessing the Scheduled Tasks (Cron Jobs) Interface

To start creating cron jobs and automating tasks in Plesk, ensure you have logged in to your Plesk control panel. To do that, please type in your IP address, hostname, or domain name inside your browser search bar and add “:8443” at the end. It should look something like: https://yourdomain.com:8443. By doing that, you will be prompted by a login form requiring your username and password.

Once logged in, Plesk will automatically display the “Websites & Domains” page, which will be the index every time. In the middle, you will see a table section containing a list of all your websites. 

From there, please open all available tools by clicking the small, downward-pointing arrow at the far left side of the row corresponding to the website for which you want to configure cron jobs.

Performing this action will display all the functionalities you have at your disposal, which you can use to manage your website. Please click on the “Dashboard” tab.

Once you do that, all the available tools under the “Dashboard” tab will be displayed. Please scroll down a bit, and under the “Dev Tools” category, you will see the “Scheduled Tasks” icon. 

Please click on it.

Setting Up a New Cron Job

After opening the Scheduled Tasks section, you will see a list of all the already created cron jobs. If you have never created one before, the page will be empty, and you will see a couple of buttons at the top of the page. Let’s go over what they do.

• Add Task - Please click on the “Add Task” button to create a brand new cron job.

• Refresh - Please click on the “Refresh” button to refresh the list in the middle and display the newly created cron jobs you just created, in case they are not showing up.

• Remove - Please click on the “Remove” button after selecting one of your cron jobs using the checkbox on the left side, corresponding to the scheduled task you want to remove.

• Settings - Please click on the “Settings” button to open a page that will allow you to select the timezone for your cron jobs. You will have the option to use the default Plesk timezone or specify a different one entirely. 

Now that we've gone over all the options on the cron job page, let’s explore the way to actually add a cron job! To proceed with this task, please click the blue “Add Task” button located at the top left of the screen.

Performing this action will redirect you to the Scheduled Task Configuration page. Let’s go over all the configuration options there.

• Task Type - Please use the radio button to select the type of task that you want to run through the Scheduled tasks.
  • Run a Command - Please use this text field to type the command you would like the cron job to execute. This command should follow the Linux Terminal syntax; otherwise, it will not work correctly. 
  • Fetch a URL - Please use the content box to enter a URL where the scheduled task should send a request and receive a response. Typically, a 2xx or 3xx response is considered a successful URL fetch.
  • Run a PHP Script - Please use the text field (or the folder icon on its left side), to set the path to a PHP script you would like the cron service to execute. In addition to that, you will have an additional text field on the right side to set arguments for the script you would like to use. You will also have a drop-down menu underneath that will let you select the PHP version for the script.
• Run - Please use the drop-down menu and text fields here to define the schedule for your cron job.
• Description - Please use this text field here to add a description for your cron job.
• Send Notifications - Please use the radio button here to select if you want to receive notifications when the cron job is executed. You can choose to either completely deactivate notifications or send notifications only if there is an error with the cron job. You may also select the recipient. It can be either the Pleks web hosting account owner or another user.

When you are finished typing in and setting all cron job settings, you have the option to either execute it right now or save the scheduled task so the cron service executes it on the specified rotation.

To execute the cron job right now, please click on the “Run Now” button underneath the form you just filled. If you would like to save the task and keep it running on the set schedule, please click on the “Ok” button located on the right side of the “Run Now” button.

Upon pressing the “Ok” button, you will be redirected to the previous page, where you will see your newly created cron job in the table section in the middle. Let's review the management options available on this page for the cron jobs.

Managing Existing Cron Jobs

On the index scheduled tasks page, you will have the option to perform multiple actions to manage your existing cron jobs. Let’s go over them below.

• Edit - To edit the cron job, please click on the command, URL, or PHP script underneath the “Command” column in the table section. Performing this will take you to the configuration options for the selected cron jobs, from where you can perform the changes you need.
• Disable/Enable - Please click on the green tickbox corresponding to the cron job you would like to disable, located underneath the “Schedule” column on the table section. Once disabled, the green tickbox will turn into a grey X mark, which you can click once again to re-enable the cron job.
• Run it manually - Please click on the “Run Now” link, located on the right side of the table section corresponding to the cron job you would like to execute right now manually.
• Remove - Please use the checkboxes on the far left side of the table sections to select the cron job you would like to remove. After doing that, please click on the “Remove” button located right above the table section, on the right side of the “Refresh” button.
  
  

This wraps up all the actions you can perform with cron jobs after you have already created them using our instructions in the previous paragraph.

Conclusion

Cron jobs are a powerful tool for automating time-based tasks on your website. With Plesk’s user-friendly interface, setting them up is straightforward and doesn’t require deep technical knowledge.

Hopefully, following this tutorial has taught you how to create and manage scheduled tasks efficiently, ensuring your site runs smoothly and your maintenance routines stay on track.