How to read a cron expression
Cron is the task scheduler in Linux and most hosting control panels. A schedule is written as five space-separated fields:
┌───────── minute (0–59) │ ┌─────── hour (0–23) │ │ ┌───── day of month (1–31) │ │ │ ┌─── month (1–12 or JAN–DEC) │ │ │ │ ┌─ day of week (0–6, Sunday = 0 or 7, or SUN–SAT) * * * * * team
Special characters
*— any value:* * * * *runs the task every minute.,— a list:0 9,18 * * *— at 9:00 and 18:00.-— a range:0 9 * * 1-5— at 9:00 on weekdays./— a step:*/10 * * * *— every 10 minutes.@daily,@hourly,@weekly,@monthly— shorthands for common schedules.
Note: if both day of month and day of week are set, the task runs when either condition matches. On a server, cron uses the system time zone — check it before scheduling a task for a specific hour. Cron jobs are available on all shared hosting and VPS plans.