Wordpress CRON job commands

Question

From browsing the web I've noticed two variations for the command to initiate the WordPress cron jobs from cPanel.

Please could someone explain the difference and which is the correct/best option to use?

1. wget -qO- https://www.mydomain.co.uk/wp-cron.php &> /dev/null

2. wget -q -O - https://www.mydomain.co.uk/wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron >/dev/null 2>&1

Thanks

Answer 1

Sure, I would love to explain the concept:

> is for redirect

/dev/null is a black hole where any data sent, will be discarded

2 is the file descriptor for Standard Error

> is for redirect

& is the symbol for file descriptor (without it, the following 1 would be considered a filename)

1 is the file descriptor for Standard Out

Therefore >/dev/null 2>&1 is redirect the output of your program to /dev/null. Include both the Standard Error and Standard Out.

cron will only email you if there is some output from you job. With everything redirected to null, there is no output and hence cron will not email you.

Hope I explained it more clearly.