Hello,
One thing I’ve never found well documented, well not that but more “not obvious”, with CS-Cart was the set-up and configuration of CRON jobs. For example - What would be automated within CS-Cart and at what schedule.
Some years ago, being rather naive, we assumed many of the features below would be included in CS-Cart or the near future (v1.xx lol!), based on our experience with other eCommerce products. Having had clients provide us with feedback while others identifying a specific need, we assumed many of their requests and features would be implemented in due course (as were often available in other products, or custom modifications were required).
WISH LIST
Has anyone had experience and success with automation with any of these i[/i] ‘CRON’-based functions?
CRON Jobs run every x hour(s) to perform and trigger:[list]
[]Send emails regarding incomplete carts and their contents.
[]Send bulk emails to a group of customers (perhaps staggered - xxx per hour) - the ‘Newsletter’ feature in CS-Cart,
[]Syncronise and update exchange rates of configured currencies,
[]Creation, collation and compilation of various reports (built in or custom scope),
[]Export / create lists - such as Price Lists divided into various user group discounts,
[]Get latest transactions from Paypal (and other payment gateways) and display in Admin Area (like an admin home page widget),
[]Send stock requisitions to suppliers (for stock under x, and approved to be included in auto requests sent to configured suppliers, and perhaps cheapest price [highest priority] supplier if more than one),
[]Archiving system logs,
[]Backup of database,
[]Optimisation of database,
[]Additional backup of database,
[]Emailing / FTP transfer of backup,
[]Backup of /Images/,
[]Backup of /Skins/,
[]Backup of /Addons/
[]Even automatic restore of folders / database at set interval (perhaps for demonstrative or other reasons),
[/list]
The possibilities are endless (should some of these features be coded or modified).
Having a page to configure these schedules, e.g. for backups to be done every 12 hours, and something else every hour, when the CRON job runs, then obviously not eveything is triggered, only when x number of times between last run and next run are greater than current time (something like that)… This would mean a 30 Minute cron, would still only send 1 backup ever 12 hours (as example above).
Fingers are crossed!
MY QUESTION
So what is the point of the “example” CRON job in the admin area for? It seems fairly vague and useless? Or perhaps it is capable of the points above! Who knows?!
Admin Settings - CRON Example:
http:\www.company.com/admin.php?dispatch=profiles.password_reminder&cron_password=xyz
Okay, so this means trigger password reminders, but… shouldn’t they be sent out “instantly” upon password reminder / reset request? (rather than waiting for 3 hourly CRON or even 30 minute CRON?). (note: slashes reversed to stop forum created link in URL above)
SYNTAX
What options are available to be exchanged with “profiles.password_reminder” to support other functions?
http:\www.company.com/admin.php?dispatch=________________&cron_password=key_value
Thanks for your help, I’m willing to donate to anyone for their time should they have anything documented or even ‘‘developed’’ that can make the process easier!
Cheers!