Using lynx or wget in cron to call a php script?

Solution 1:

If you want to secure those files, you can configure your web server to allow connections to those particular scripts only from localhost. You didn't mention what webserver you use, but for example in Apache this could be done with the combination of Directory and Allow/Deny parameters, something like

<Directory /cron>
    Order deny,allow
    Deny from all
    Allow from localhost
</Directory>

For additional security you may modify your cron scripts to check the client address. If it's other than localhost, refuse to do the cron magic and return something else.

When it comes to tools, lynx and wget are both fine. When I use lynx in cron, I tend to use it with -dump flag, though.