Click the link called “Scripts Library” on the main cPanel page. This takes you to links to the various software packages that you can install with an easy user interface. Select phpBB and you will be on your way.

phpBB has been around for a long time. Many sites use it. I have used it in the past and recommend it.

Two common problems people often encounter with cron jobs :

• • 1. a server uses “military” time or a 24-hour clock rather than a 12-hour clock. For example, 1:00 pm would be 13:00
    2. your server’s time zone might be different than your own. For example, your server is in Atlanta, Georgia and you live in Sacramento, California, “your” time is 3 hours different than the server’s time for running the cron job. Remember this when you check to see that your cron job ran and find unexpected results (such as it did not run because the time has not been reached, or you think it ran early and it should not have run).
    Now, let’s set up a cron job. First, where cPanel asks you to enter an email address where the output will be sent. The server will send you an email with the results of the cron job. It could provide helpful info such as an error encountered, so be sure to enter a valid email address relevant to your cron job.

    Next, enter the command to run. This can be a simple Linux command, a PHP script, and many more. A previous post discussed examples of cron jobs that could be run. An example of a simple Linux command that deletes (rm) all files in a directory for temporary files could look like this: rm /home/username/public_html/tmp/*

    The rest of the cPanel interface sets when to run the cron job and how often to run it. The settings appear complex at first, but they are not really difficult to learn. We discuss this in a future post about cron jobs.

A cron job can automate a repetitive task. For example, a cron job can periodically delete all mail in an email account to reduce the amount of disk space used. A cron job can also “rotate” log files.

A cron job can even be used to make changes to your website. The quote of the day and blog of the day are each updated every day by a cron job.

Cron jobs give you great flexibility in the times and intervals they can be set to run. You can set minute, hour, day of month, month, day of week in various ways to fine-tune how frequently or infrequently your job runs.

To create your custom 404 page, in cPanel, click the link to “Error pages.” Click “404 (wrong page)” In the large form field, enter your HTML for your custom page. Save the page.

Some examples:

• default 404 page — I have not yet created a 404 page for this site, so here is what the default 404 page looks like. Ugly.
• custom 404 page — looks nicer, page matches the look of the site, plus includes some helpful info
• another custom 404 page — simple 404 page with a meta refresh to take you to the home page