Friday, July 31, 2009

SetCronJob is a dirty spammer?

Onet.pl dislikes SetCronJob! They think I'm a dirty spammer :D

I've contacted them, and waiting for some response. However, you'd better register with email from a recommended webmail such as GMail, Yahoo mail, HotMail, etc.

UPDATED: They've replied me. This problem has been solved :) Thanks to this article, I've changed my host name to setcronjob.com. The restriction of email .onet.** has been removed :)

Resend activation mail

If you didnot receive any mail within 10 minutes, you can request activation mail.

In fact, it's always faster and better to contact me :D

Remove captcha at Account control panel

I've removed captcha (letters in image verifying) at My Account. You can now easily change password, change account type without getting trouble from captcha :D

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Your account will be upgraded immediately!

From now on, right after making payment, your account will be upgraded!

However, your payment will be reviewed within 1 - 24 hours, and you'll be mailed when this is completed.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Unable to reach 000webhost.com

Some days ago, I noticed that a large number of 'This URL is unreachable' messages was produced.

So, I inserted a logging script to see what happen.

I found that this error occured when users set cron jobs with URL contains .comxa.com, .netne.net, .netau.net, .netii.net, .host22.com, etc. All of them is owned by 000webhost.com users with free account.

The problem, maybe, after a long time thinking and trying to fix, is 000webhost.com banned SetCronJob's IP / service:

- Can't ping their subdomain, e.g subsmith.comxa.com

- Can't lynx their website, e.g http://subsmith.comxa.com/

- Can't open their web site (using phpproxy).

This banned decision may be caused by SetCronJob opened too many connection to 000webhost.com users' website (too many users set cron jobs with web site hosted at 000webhost.com), and their firewall banned SetCronJob's IP (similar firewall is DDOS Deflate). 

It's a pity that 000webhost.com users can no longer use my service, but, if this is their decision, I can do nothing.

Sorry all 000webhost.com users :(

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UPDATED: Look like CBA.pl banned SetCronJob, too :(

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Premium account: new features

From now on, premium account at SetCronJob will have three features:

- No restriction of domain names and URL.

There's no restriction of domain name and URL. Set cron job with whatever you want!

- HTTPS is supported.

You can set cron job with URL start with https://
e.g https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/

- Create muliple cron jobs with same URL*

For example, you can create cron jobs to launch your script every 10 and 15 minutes. So, it will execute at 0, 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, 45, 50 minute.

You'll no longer see 'This URL isalready in database.' message.

Happy setting up your cron jobs!

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You can try all premium features with demo account. Username: demo, password: demo.

* This is now applied for all account :)

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

SetCronJob Mailer

As said before, SetCronJob is now using GMail as SMTP server to send mails.

When trying to log in, send mail, then quit many times, SetCronJob's mail box was temporarily blocked* by GMail. When I tried logging in with my browser, it required me to enter password as well as captcha (letters in image) before let me in.

A small improvement is re-use the SMTP connection. This helped a little when sending a lot of mails to notify cron jobs nearly expired or unreachable.

After all, I decided to code my own mailer daemon, which will check for new mails, then send them. It will be called every 5 minutes, and send maximum 20 emails once being called.

So, you may see a little (or, a big)  delay time before received messages from SetCronJob.

Let's make a calculation: if there're 100 emails in queue, and once being called, my mailer daemon sends only 20 emails. So, it will send all emails after being called 5 times, or 25 minutes.

So, please patient if you receive nothing after 5 minutes. Late is always better than nothing* :D

Sorry for any inconvenience.

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* Today, this problem hang my mailer in 3 hours for nothing. Luckily, I'm there, kill it, then apply the 20 mails limitation. Let's see what happen tomorrow, when SetCronJob try to send mail notifying about cron jobs nearly expired.

Friday, July 17, 2009

Remove delete unactivated account link.

Some days ago, I include a delete link into activation mail, so that if somebody received unexpected message can simply delete that account.

The problem is some users click on it by mistake, and make their account deleted :(

I've removed that link. Sorry for any inconvinience.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Cron jobs nearly expired!

Today, I've set up cron jobs daily, at 01:05 AM GMT to send mail notfiying users with cron jobs nearly expired. First messages were sent at 12:17 GMT.

What to do when you have cron jobs nearly expired?

You can delete these cron jobs, and create new one. So, the cron jobs lifetime will be 1 month since created.

Or, you can upgrade your account, and get such benefits as cron jobs lifetime 1 year, or cron jobs every 5 minutes with only $5 for a year. It's cheap, isn't it? :D

EDITED: change execution time to 05:05 AM GMT.

EDITED: From July 18th, 2009, notifying messages will be sent when you have cron jobs expire on next x day, x=7, 5, 3, 2, 1.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Cron jobs unreachable will be deleted.

Cron jobs unreachable are cron jobs with URL that SetCronJob can't open a connection to its host. This may be caused by its host is not valid, domain name expired (dropped), its firewall blocked SetCronJob, or slow internet connection, etc.

For example, you set a cron job every 5 minutes with URL like http://unreachable.example.com/backup.php, and SetCronJob can't connect to unreachable.example.com within 2 seconds.

From July 15, 2009, all cron jobs unreachable will be deleted. This is an automatic process, and will be run every 5 days, at 07:35 AM GMT. So, the next execution should be at July 20, 2009, 07:35 AM GMT.

This is to save resources to execute other URLs faster, as cron jobs unreachable will take 2 seconds for nothing.

When your cron jobs are deleted, you'll received a message from SetCronJob. You can re-check whether your cron jobs are unreachable or not by go to that URL, set cron job with that URL, or check with web-sniffer.net, adfreeproxy.com, phpmyproxy.com.

If they're OK, please reply that message to inform me. I'll be appreciated for that.

Sorry for any inconvenience, and thank you for reading :)

Friday, July 10, 2009

When will you be e-mailed?

Thanks to GMail, all emails are now sent to users perfectly :)

When will you be emailed?

- Register an account, and SetCronJob will send you an email to activate your account. You must follow that link to confirm that you're the owner of that email adress.

- When you forgot username / password and fill the form at Lost Password page, your password will be sent to your email.

- Make a payment, and a thank-you message will be sent.

- After payment was verified, an Account upgraded (pass) / downgraded (fail) message will be sent.

- When your premium account expire, an email will be sent to inform you.

- When your cron jobs are nearly expire, SetCronJob will send you an email to notify.

- EDITED: When your cron jobs are deleted because of unreachable URL, you'll receive a message.

- When you contact me, I'll reply you.

- Sometimes I may wanna contact you, and I'll email you.

Except all above, you'll never be emailed.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Your payment will be processed faster now!

In the past, your account will be upgraded whenever your payment deposited into my account balance. This is advised by 2CheckOut, my payment gateway.

Sometime it takes a long time for money to be deposited, with PayPal is about 1 days, and with credit / debit cards is about 3 days.

As a vendor, I wanna be sure that the transaction has been completed perfectly before process account upgrading.

Thinking as a user, I want to upgrade my account as fast as possible. I paid for service, so WHY you make me wait for a long time?

So, from July 08, 2009, your account will be processed right after verified by 2CheckOut team. This takes only 6 - 24 hours to complete :)

EDITED: it often takes only 1 hour to complete :)

SetCronJob has new mailer!

Since July 08, 2009, SetCronJob will use GMail as SMTP server to send mail.

Hope this solves return mails problem.

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EDITED: YES, this solves all mail problem.

From now on, accounts that registered with unreal emails will be manually deleted. (All unactivated account will automatically deleted after three days).

Sunday, July 5, 2009

Problem with captcha at SetCronJob.

When I tried changing my password on FireFox, I keep getting error message "Please type 6 characters in the image.".

As this works as expected on Opera and Internet Explorer, I think there's a problem with FireFox. So, I check Error Console and read its error message.

The problem is FireFox complaints about getting directly value of input ID.

e.g <input type="text" id="txt" name="txt" value="some text" />

and if you use JavaScript like: alert(txt.value); you'll get an error.

However, this works: alert(document.getElementById('txt').value);

So, I corrected the script, and the problem has no reason to exist :D

Thanks Daphna for informing me this problem :)

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

Sorry for wrong message!

Hi all,

Today when I let my script automatically check database and inform users about nearly expired cron jobs, I've made a mistake so that it send to (nearly) all users and say that they have nearly expired cron jobs.

I'm so sorry for that message. It's my fault.

Your cron jobs will not be deleted until it expired. The expire day shown in Control Panel will always be correct.

Sorry for any inconvenience, and thank you for reading.

Please note that emails sent from webmaster@setcronjob.com are automatic messages. However, you can simply reply those messages if you want to contact me. Your reply will be automatically send to my current mailbox nguyenanthuan@gmail.com, which I often check once a day.

Regards,

SetCronJob.

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.

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