Hello, Jackrabbit here from your friendly CRON Automation Center!
Have you been having trouble trying to figure out how to get your cron running for the
purpose of pinging your site? Well if you are, don't feel alone.. its a common headache
for the average person.
With my latest concotion, you can simply cut and paste your URLs into a text box, click send to the hopper and you
are set to ping around the clock.. No fuss... no muss....
But wait... before we get into all the technical stuff, take a quick gander at a couple of screen shots of some of the more important areas.
First the Profile sheet used to select which pingers are active:
Cron Profile Sheet
Next we have an interesting email report sent to you following a ping.
Email Report
Here is how it works:
Please skip all this stuff unless you are a glutton for punishment!
The program counts the number of urls you entered, then multiplies 60 seconds times 60 minutes to get 3600 seconds
in an hour.. then multiplies the 3600 seconds times the 24 hour period and comes up with 86,400 or something like
that. This is the number of seconds in a 24 hour period.. Then it divides the total time in seconds in the 24 hour
period by the number of urls and comes up with how many seconds between pings.
But now you say... oops that will give
an exact number of minutes or hours between pings and could be a foot print. Meaning if we ping every 7.5 hours it
could be detected... so the next step the computer takes is to add and subtract 25 percent of the time between pings
and use that number to generate a random time + or - 25 per cent..Lets work a specific example to see if we understand
this whole thing...
I will begin the detailed breakdown using only 9 domains. You can enter an unlimited number of domain names and the system will work with them perfectly. The number is kept small here for better understanding. The system will actually process mysql record numbers for the math vice actual urls. This is more efficient and space conservative. The urls will be given a sequential number starting at digit 1 as the urls are inserted. Note the original order is "1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9" and after the random sort look like (9) "5 9 4 1 8 2 7 6 3". Note the first number is not a url number, it is the total number of urls in the data base.
Next the system calculates the ping times.. as shown below:
001|22|22
002|01|21
003|04|21
004|07|16
005|09|29
006|12|35
007|14|49
008|17|03
009|20|09
Now what this list means and I will break one down.. 001|22|22 means that the first URL which is "1. mydomain1.com/ping.php
" as shown below will be the first to ping and it will fire at exactly 22:22 which in 24 hour time means 10:22 pm... are we getting the hang of it yet?... Good... now lets calculate one example and see how this sucker came to that conclusion.
Notice that the list above begins to ping at around 8:00 pm at night and has competed all of the urls by the end of 24 hours which is around 8:00 pm the next night. An interesting point here is that even though it is randomly picking the times, at the end of each 24 hour cycle the ping random time will be recalculated and additionally all of the urls are randomly sorted again. In other words the order of ping of urls will be different each 24 hours so it concentrates on randomly removing any footprints.
Additionally, as you add or remove urls as you build more sites, they are dumped into the hopper and will be automatically fed into the active loop at the end of each 24 hour ping period. In other words the loop is not restarted every time you add some more urls to the hopper.. they are held in limbo till the next 24 hour cycle begins. If it is necessary to start the new urls pinging immediately you have a reset button that will start the 24 hour cycle over again and activate the new ones right away. I do not recommend this, best to lett the system pick up the new urls as it was designed to do.
Now look down the page and see the actual first ping that occurred in this package. It started the first ping for url number 5 at 19:57 which is 7:57 pm and the next ping is set for 22:22 which is 20:22 am. make sense... I thought it would..
1 Next ping->01:21 Last ping->19:57 mydomain5.com/ping.php
So for details of how the math works, here it is.
*************************************************
60 sec times 60 min = 3600 seconds per hour.
24 hours times 3600 sec = 86,400 seconds in 24 hours.
The system then divides 86,400 / 9 to get 9600 seconds between pings.
Then it divides 9600 by 60 to get 160 the number of minutes between pings.
Then it divides 160 by 60 to get 2,67 the number of hours between pings.
Then it multiplies the 2.67 hours times .25 = .67 hours.. 1/4 of the time.
Now it will add (2.67 + .67) = 3.34 and subtract (2.67 - .67) = 2.00
So the ping for the 2.67 hour will be randomly from 2.00 hours to 3.34 hours.
Hope I have not lost all of you .. BAsically instead of just setting all 9 pings
at 2.67 hours apart, it adds and subtracts 1/4 of that time then take a random
number betweem 2.00 and 3.34.. so lets see if it works below:
1 Next ping->22:22 Last ping->19:57 mydomain5.com/ping.php
In this example it is now 19:57 = 7:57 pm at night.
The next ping is set to go at 22:22 = 10:22 am in the morning.
If we subtract the time of 10:22 from 19.57 =
19:57
20:57 = 1 hour
21:57 = 1 hour
22:22 = 25 min
******************
So bottom line this one fires exactly 2 hours and 25 minutes later.
That is right in line with our firing each 2.67 hours +1 25%
or since .67 hours = 40 min we should for the next 24 hours be in the
range of 2 hours + 40 min to 2 hours - 40 min
That gives us a range of random from (1 hour 20 min) to (2 hours and 40 min)
and that makes sense since the first one will fire in exactly (2 hours and 25 min.)
1. mydomain1.com/ping.php
2. mydomain2.com/ping.php
3. mydomain3.com/ping.php
4. mydomain4.com/ping.php
5. mydomain5.com/ping.php
6. mydomain6.com/ping.php
7. mydomain7.com/ping.php
8. mydomain8.com/ping.php
9. mydomain9.com/ping.php
Original order
*****************
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
First sort (order of ping for first 24 hours)
**********
9 5 9 4 1 8 2 7 6 3
Note the first actual url to ping is 5 as the first number is always the total
urls to ping which in this case is a total of 1 thru 9 = 9.
001|22|22
002|01|21
003|04|21
004|07|16
005|09|29
006|12|35
007|14|49
008|17|03
009|20|09
1 Next ping->22:22 Last ping->19:57 mydomain5.com/ping.php
Special commands
****************
1. mydomain1.com/ping.php*2
2. mydomain2.com/ping.php*3
