How do I create a cron job?

Ploi makes it easy to schedule recurring commands on your server with cron jobs — no need to edit the crontab by hand.

Creating a cron job

Open your server and go to the Cron jobs section, then add a new job. You provide:

• Command — the command to run (for example php8.5 /home/ploi/example.com/artisan schedule:run).
• User — the system user the command runs as, usually ploi (or root if it needs elevated access).
• Frequency — pick a preset (every minute, hourly, nightly at 2 AM, weekly, monthly) or choose custom and enter your own cron expression.
• Description — an optional note so you remember what the job is for.

Ploi installs the job into the server's /etc/crontab for you and writes its output to a per-job log you can view from the panel.

The Laravel scheduler

If you run a Laravel application, you only need a single cron job running every minute — Laravel handles the rest from your app's schedule:

php8.5 /home/ploi/example.com/artisan schedule:run

Set the frequency to every minute, and adjust the PHP version and path to match your site.

Custom schedules

For full control, choose the custom frequency and enter a standard five-field cron expression (minute hour day month day-of-week). For example, 0 3 * * * runs daily at 3 AM. The special @reboot value is also supported to run a command at boot.

You can pause, resume, edit or delete a cron job at any time from the same section.