What you’ll need

You’ll create a task that writes a timestamp to a log file every five minutes. Once that works, swap in your real task.

Steps

Step 1: Create a folder outside public_html
In System Info & Files then File Manager, create /home/USERNAME/tasks and /home/USERNAME/logs.

Create /home/USERNAME/tasks/heartbeat.php:

<?php
$line = date('c') . " heartbeat ok\n";
file_put_contents(__DIR__ . '/../logs/heartbeat.log', $line, FILE_APPEND);
echo $line;

Step 3: Open Cronjobs
Open Advanced Features then Cronjobs.
Step 4: Set the schedule
Minute */5, and * for hour, day of month, month and day of week. Cron schedule syntax explained (with examples)

/usr/local/bin/php /home/USERNAME/tasks/heartbeat.php >> /home/USERNAME/logs/cron.log 2>&1

Replace USERNAME in both places. Create the job.

Step 6: Wait and check
After ten minutes, open logs/heartbeat.log. You should see two timestamped lines.
Step 7: Replace with your real task
Edit the command to run your real script, keeping the log redirect until you’re confident it works. Running PHP scripts from cron: paths, output and common mistakes
Step 8: Remove the test
Delete the heartbeat job and files.

heartbeat.log gained a new line roughly every five minutes, and cron.log contains no errors.

What happens	What to do
No log lines at all	Check the schedule saved, and the full paths. Cron job not running
cron.log shows ‘No such file’	Wrong path or `USERNAME` not replaced.
cron.log shows ‘command not found’	PHP binary path differs. Running PHP scripts from cron: paths, output and common mistakes

New to Traxio? The PHP hosting page lists the PHP versions, database and tools every account gets, free for the first 30 days.