The Force Auto Renew/Delete button located on your Admin Center's Main Panel is one of two methods of running the "Automated Email Renewal & Ad Deletion" program.
When the "Automated Email Renewal & Ad Deletion" program is run, it will review the expiration dates of all ads and then:
- Send the Renewal Email to advertisers with ads that will expire in [x] days.
(Where x is the number of days entered in the "Set Pre-Expiration Date For Email Renewal" field on the Settings screen.)
- Delete ads that have expired.
Go ahead and text it. Simply click the Force Auto Renew/Delete button. After a few seconds, you should receive a messages that looks like the following:
Cronjob Auto Renewal Email / Ad Deletion
As mentioned, there are two methods for automatically sending Renewal Emails and deleting expired sites. The first is the Force Auto Renew/Delete method mentioned above and the second is by the scheduling of a Cronjob, which we will discuss below.
A Cronjob allows us to schedule the "Automated Email Renewal & Ad Deletion" program to run by itself each day (or as scheduled). A Cronjob is a function of a Unix server and not of WebAD Wizard™, for this reason it cannot be used on NT servers, which is one of the reasons we created the Force Auto Renew/Delete button. Some host companies do not allow Cronjobs to be scheduled and that is the other reason why we created the Force Auto Renew/Delete button.
If you are hosting with us, then a Cronjob has been scheduled to run once a day. If you are hosting with someone other than us, we would have notified you in the installation email if a Cronjob could not be scheduled. In cases where Cronjobs could not be scheduled, you should run the Force Auto Renew/Delete function a couple times a week, or as often as you like.
- If a Cronjob is scheduled, there really isn't any need to use the Force Auto Renew/Delete button, however, doing so is perfectly fine and it is a good idea to use it from time to time.
- With both methods mentioned above (Force and Cron), the renewal email is sent only once, so you can click the Force Auto Renew/Delete button as often as you like without the worry of multiple emails being delivered to the same person.
