cron commands for website?

[BuzzStPoint]

My domain has crontab in the control panel,
I sent a trouble ticket to the tech support for backing up the site.. he told me the best way would be to use the crontab. He's heard of doing this but is unsure how the commands work.

Well I have no idea how to use cron..
Anyone with any info on how I would type in the cron command.

I'ts a simple form.. set my times and the "command" Unix style.. But I dont know how to backup easily..

I would like to backup the whole site and do it once.. Then I would log in ftp and download the tar,zip or gzip.

 

[BuzzStPoint]

Ok I figured it out.
For those who also are looking for this.
I downloaded a premade script..
I want to post the code but:

You are free to use this software any way you wish provided you follow the following terms:
That you cannot use the source in any script/software you redistribute or sell in any way.
You can NOT redistribute this software in any way

So go here: http://www.worldwidecreations.com/freescripts.htm
enter your email and select World Wide backup
The file will be emailed to your right away.. Dont worry its freeware.

Now open the file with wordpad or any other text pad. Edit the fields, Instructions are easy..

Upload to your webserver and chmod to 755
Call the script via cron and bang done..

Just did it.. Took my 4000+ files and tar'd it up real quick.

I set my cron to run once a month..
From what I learned if your on shared hosting, you dont want to run backups all the time. You will slow the server and use bandwidth.. Once a month is fine by me.. Or your can run your cron then delete the cron.

anyways go here and download this file.. You have to put your email address in and they'll email the file to you.

 

[BuzzStPoint]

I do have one more question though.. In my email log I got this.

ARCHIVING FILES
tar: Removing leading `/' from member names
tar: /home/directory/here/htmlarea/htmlarea.css:
Cannot stat: Permission denied
tar: /home/directory/here/htmlarea/dialog.js:
Cannot stat: Permission denied
tar: /home/directory/here/htmlarea/htmlarea-lang-en.js: Cannot stat: Permission denied
tar: /home/directory/here/htmlarea/popups:
Cannot stat: Permission denied
tar: /home/directory/here/htmlarea/htmlarea.js:
Cannot stat: Permission denied
tar: /home/directory/here/htmlarea/license.txt:
Cannot stat: Permission denied

Not that the Htmlarea is a big deal to me but, why wont it back that up?