Geek Out: Scheduled Indexing of your Concrete5 via Cron

I thought I would share how to get the automatic indexing working in a Concrete5 site, if you happen to use that CMS.

There is a special URL in the admin dashboard, which you can call from cron, to periodically re-index your site.

How to get Concrete5 to Automatically Index in One Easy Step

This is what the cron entry should look like:

27 * * * * /usr/bin/wget -O - -q -t 1 http://www.myc5domain.com/index.php/tools/required/jobs?auth=19eef....etc

This runs the job every hour at 27 minutes past. You should also be able to use other programs to hit the URL if wget is not installed:

27 * * * * /path/to/lynx -source http://www.myc5domain.com/index.php/tools/required/jobs?auth=19eef....etc

27 * * * * /path/to/curl --silent --compressed http://www.myc5domain.com/index.php/tools/required/jobs?auth=19eef....etc

Make sure you use absolute paths with cron because its environment is not the same as that of a shell. It is more limited. Also, of course the way you enter cron jobs will be different per host, and some may allow you to do it via a control panel. Either way, if you do not know how, you can ask your hosting company. This is a typical and easy thing to set up, if you provide them with your Concrete5 installation's special index URLs from the dashboard.

Enjoy!