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Setting up CRON for Auction Factory


Why do you need a CRON Job?


CRON jobs are tasks that run at scheduled times, where usually this is a service offered by the hosting provider. These tasks make sure that certain extension tasks run at a specific time. This way you make sure that for instance your users get the notifications about upcoming expiring auctions or information regarding their watchlists.

CRON jobs are required to keep an extension working properly. For detailed information about what each component needs a CRON for, check the detailed link at the bottom of this article.

Where do i set up my CRON Jobs?


Setting up the CRON jobs might be different from one solution to another, since this depends allot on the service provider. Here we advise to check out our references and match them to the ones provided by your hosting provider or other 3rd party which is offering the CRON service.


What tasks do i set up in my CRON Jobs?


There are two tasks that must run:

  • Common task that may run every 5-15 minutes, that closes current expiring auctions and notifies winners/auctioneers.
  • Daily task that runs once a day, which takes care of cleanups, updates the exchange rates for currencies and notifies users of upcoming auctions (in the next 24 hours)

Our recommendation is to set up the common at a 5 minutes pace and the daily at midnight.


You can find exact links for your site by going to the component Settings - CRON Information



These are the links you must set up to be accessed in CRON, for documentation purposes we only show the links for Auction Factory:


  • Common task: [Yoursite]/index.php?option=com_auctionfactory&controller=crontask&pass=
  • Daily task: [Yoursite]/index.php?option=com_auctionfactory&controller=crontask&daily=1&pass=


You can set up / change the password for the CRON jobs in Settings - General Settings, first tab - CRON Settings area.


Detailed CRON information for all our extension can be found at this link.



(!) Documentation based on Auction Factory version 4.3.3