Tip: Pipe your cron jobs to /dev/null if you aren't doing anything with output, because some hosts e-mail you results and no one needs an extra piece of useless e-mail every day.

Just change http://www.google.com to page of your choice. However it's important to know that "archive" you're taking will only be a snapshot of that page on a particular day.

What I mean by that is, if you're archiving a blog page every day, this archiver won't archive that page on a particular day, it'll just be archiving what was there at that time. So it's not useful for everything, but it's good if you have access to a page that changes constantly, once a day, whose results you'd like to store.

Add that line above into your crontab file. These days every host has a control panel so there should be a place in there to add cron jobs. If you'd like archiver to run at a time other than midnight, or if it should run weekly, monthly, or whatever, try this tool I've made for you:

http://www.robertplank.com/cron

I've designed it same way Task Scheduler is setup, you can enter a certain time, run only on weekdays, run only on certain days of week. Anything you want.

This tip doesn't take care of everything... for example, wget won't save images on a page unless they're referenced by full URLs. In next installment of this article series I'll be showing you how you can use PHP to make up for some of things wget can't do (like grabbing images).

Here's my solution: http://www.jumpx.com utorials/commandline/get.zip

It's not most perfect script in world, but it should do what you want most of time. If you'd like to delve into what it does, I've added comments within so you can see what it does. I've commented all functions and a few of important parts of code.

ARGUMENTS (NOT THE SHOUTING KIND)

But wait, you want to use it in a crontab, which is run from command line. You can't just do something like:

php get.php?url=http://www.google.com

Because it'll try looking for a *file* named all that, complete with question mark and all. So what if you have ten different URLs to grab off ten different crontabs, but you only want one script.

How would you do all that? It's a long brutal ordeal so prepare yourself. Ready?

php get.php url=http://www.google.com

Yeah, that's all there is to it. PHP's pretty cool like that, it takes arguments after file name and stores them in same array you'd check anyway.

One thing you might notice is that every time you run PHP from command line, it gives you something like this:

Content-type: text/html X-Powered-By: PHP/4.3.3

your output here...

Those first couple of lines are HTTP headers. But we're not using HTTP (not loading it from a browser), so in command line it's better to call php with "-q" option, like this:

php -q get.php url=http://www.google.com

The "q" stands for quiet, and will refrain from giving you HTTP headers. If you're just piping script to /dev/null (to nothing) in a crontab, it doesn't really make a difference but you should try to make this a habit when running PHP from command line.

That's enough for you to at least get started. If you still feel liking poking about with things PHP can do in command line, you can try prompting a user for keyboard input, like this:

echo "Give me your name: "; $data = fopen("php://stdin", "rb");

while (1==1) { $chunk = fread($data, 1); if ($chunk == " " || $chunk == " ") break; $input .= $chunk; } fclose($data);

echo "Hello $input! ";

?>

Remember, that only works when PHP is run from shell.

If you have PHP installed in Windows on a local machine of yours, you can also see what happens when you try to read (and write) to filehandles like "COM1:" and "LPT1:" ... yep, you guessed it, serial port and printer port. If PHP isn't installed on computer you're using now then don't bother. But it is possible to use PHP to print and interact with your peripherals as well.

You're welcome.

Robert Plank is the creator of Lightning Track, Redirect Pro, Rotatorblaze, and others.

An easy way to display the content saved by this article's script is explained in chapters 15 and 16 of his book, "Simple PHP": http://www.simplephp.com

Now you have a working modem/TA you are ready to configure connection to your ISP.

Connecting up:

First, make sure that there is no other application running on your computer. Check Task bar. If you see another application, right click it and Close.

You will need to have your ISP dial-up number, account username and password to hand. If you don’t know what these are, just telephone ISP and they will give you this information. If they say something about not needing it because their CDROM does it all for you automatically, tell them that you want it anyway. Don’t get into a discussion about configuration of Internet connection. They won’t understand what you are talking about. Just palm them off with some guff and get information you want. After all, you only need them to give you access to Internet/WWW, after that, you don’t need them at all. Your ISP is a simple ‘gateway’ to Internet, that’s all. They have little else, other than advertising, to offer.

Now we have all information, grab a quick coffee and then get settled to do business! Lock door and ignore all requests for access other than those from angels bearing drinks and snacks. Priorities dear reader, priorities.

With all things ‘computer’ there is always a dozen different ways and routes to achieve same result. I am going to set out just one way of doing job. There are others, but I am going to show you easiest and most practical method.

Right click on Desktop icon named Network Neighbourhood or My Network Places. Choose Properties and you will see Create New Connection icon or New Connection icon. Double click it and a connection Wizard will start.

Now that you have Wizard on screen, choose Connect To The Internet. This will lead on to a dialog box that will ask you if you want to Choose From A List Of Service Providers, Use The CD I Got From An ISP or Set Up My Connection Manually. Choose Manually. Next you will be probably be asked which kind of connection you have. Choose to connect using a Modem. This will also be choice for your ISDN terminal Adapter (TA). You will then be asked which modem you want to use (if you have more than one connected to your computer). You will probably only have one, so select that one. You will be asked to type name of your ISP or name of this connection. It’s same thing. So type something that you will recognise when you want to make a connection. Now you will have to type in telephone number that your ISP gave you. Just type it right in without any spaces or hyphens. Next you will be presented with a dialog box that will ask you to enter username and password for connection. These are your Internet account details that your ISP gave you. Fill in boxes and make any other choices that are presented to you. If you are using XP uncheck Firewall checkbox. If you want to use Microsoft software Firewall, leave box checked. However, there are far better and more effective Firewall programs to use than built in software that Microsoft provides. But, choice is yours. Now you will be at end of Wizard and you may be asked if you want a shortcut on your Desktop. Make choice and click on Finish button.

Great! If all has configured properly it’s time to test your handiwork. Go to your Desktop and right-click on Network Neighbourhood or My Network Places. Choose Properties and you will see connections that are currently setup on your computer. You probably only have this one. If you are on a network you will see your Local Area Network connection icon too. Double click on icon named with title you gave it during configuration. The connection box will appear. Make sure that all is as it should be and click Dial. There will be a slight delay and then you will hear modem dialling out to your ISP. If you muted modem/TA speaker, you will be able to check that things are happening by watching LEDs flashing on front of modem/TA unit. You will have a bit of a wait while modems talk to each other and then you should get authenticated onto ISP’s system. Once that is done you will see a message at bottom right of your screen that tells you that you are connected and what bandwidth you have been allocated. Start your browser and enjoy.

Notice that your browser is unaltered, you don’t have to go to a special web page and you can use any search engine you like. You won’t have any spy-ware lurking in your system and your ISP will have no control over you and your activities at all.

Just to whet your appetite (but beware)…

If you have a small network at home or at your office, you can configure one computer to provide an Internet connection for all others and set it up to dial up on demand when someone on another computer starts their web browser. This process is called Internet Connection Sharing and Demand Dialling. Quite a mouthful, but not difficult to set up. However, there are a couple of technical details that you will need to understand concerning protocols. So, be careful if you find yourself trying this out. You may end up losing connections to your other computers and ruining network connectivity. To be quite honest, ICS is not a particularly efficient method of multiple Internet connectivity. There are far easier and less fraught ways of providing that kind of service.

Get yourself a PopUp killer and a decent firewall. I suggest Zone Alarm Pro for firewall. I also suggest that you get a copy of AdAware. It will protect you from spy-ware and other nasties that bad guys will try and sneak into your operating system when you are on Web. You can set your browser security to resist cookies and Java. But, that will severely restrict your experience and will stop all fun animations and like. So, don’t be too restrictive, just get right software to protect you, then you can free-up your browser and see and experience all fantastic stuff that is out there in Web-Land. You can obtain all these applications by entering their names into a search engine, say Google for instance, and you will receive a list of URLs to contact where you can download Shareware versions to try before you buy.