Dhiraj Patra has posted a tutorial to his "LAM-PHP" blog today looking at a different-than-usual way for running PHP scripts - in the cron.

Lots of programmers like PHP for its ability to code and develop web applications fast. Code-debugging is a lot easier than with PERL or C. However, there is one thing a lot of developers are puzzled about, "How to run PHP Scripts with crontab?"

He explains how cron can be used effectively to replace including a backend script into another file (bad practice) and how to get started with PHP and cron. He includes how to find if you're using a CGI or Apache version of PHP and how to locate the binary. He takes this knowledge and shows how to apply it and put a sample script into the cron file. You can check out sites like this or this for more information on cron itself.