Friday, July 3, 2009

Error messages explanation

When set cron job with your URL, you may see one of these messages:

- No need to set cron job with home page URL.

- This domain name is restricted.

Mentioned in Set cron job with a URL.

- This URL is restricted.

Your URL contains prohibited words. Read my Term of Service.

-Invalid URL. URL must start with http://, length from 12 to 200 characters.

The shortest URL, I think, will like http://a.bc/ (one character domain name with national extension), whose  length is only 12 characters. Normal URL length will be from 50 to 200 characters.

- This URL is unreachable.

This means SetCronJob cannot connect to your server (the connection time out is 2 seconds). You should have a look at your URL and make sure there's no http://http:// at begining of your URL, or some typos in domain name.

- This URL returns "HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found"...

Your server don't found the page you try to set cron job. You may check typos in URL, or go directly to that URL by browser to see whether it works.

- This URL returns "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently"...

- This URL returns "HTTP/1.1 302 Found"...

The two error messages above mean that your URL redirects to somewhere. You can fix that by enter directly your URL into browser, and when everything is loaded, copy the URL displayed on address bar, then set cron job with that URL.

- This URL returns "HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden"...

Make sure your directory has index file, or your server / script allows SetCronJob to make request. The user agent of SetCronJob is SetCronJob/1.0 (+http://www.setcronjob.com/), and IP is 95.154.192.29.

- This URL returns "HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthorized"...

This URL require logging in. Make sure you entered correct username:password@ before domain name.

- Nothing else :D

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Set cron job with a URL

In SetCronJob, URL to call must have this structure:

http://user:pass@domain.com:port/path.ext?query=value
things in italic are optional.

- HTTP only.

HTTPS, FTP, FTPS, etc are not allowed.

- User name and password are supported.

If your URL require HTTP Authentication, simply add user:pass@ before domain name.

- All domain extensions are allowed.

You can add URL with domain.com, .net, .org, .co.uk, ..., .co.cc, .uni.cc, etc. There're some domain names restricted, such as google.com, yahoo.com, youtube.com, ...


- All ports are allowed.

Recommended ports are 80 (default), 8080 (HTTP Alternative), ...

- Must have either path or query.

It's often no need to set cron job with home page, e.g http://example.com/.

http://example.com/?q=backup (home page but have query), http://example.com/backup.php (has path), http://example.com/backup.php?mode=all&sendto=webmaster (has path and query) are allowed.

- All file extensions are allowed.

You can set cron job with file.php, .asp, .aspx, .py, .pl, .cgi, .html, .html, etc

- Fragment will be trimmed.

If your URL end with #fragment, e.g http://example.com/backup.php#useless, the #useless will be trimmed. The final URL will be http://example.com/backup.php. As fragment is used only by browser, web server don't know what fragment is inserted, so it's no need to add #fragment to your URL.

Next post: How to fix error messages like This URL is unreachable or This URL returns "HTTP/1.1....