Automation & n8n articles

Automation & n8n 678 Cron jobs: what they are for and how to create one A scheduled task, or cron job, is an instruction the server runs at set times, whether you are there or not, whether...
Automation & n8n 751 Swapping WP-Cron for a real server cron job WordPress has a scheduler of its own, WP-Cron, which handles scheduled posts, update checks, emptying the bin and...
Automation & n8n 771 cPanel API tokens: automating without handing over your password Sooner or later somebody asks you for your cPanel password: the developer building an integration, the offsite...
Automation & n8n 338 What n8n is, and what you can automate with it n8n is a program that connects applications to one another through workflows: when something happens in one...
Automation & n8n 406 Do you need a VPS for n8n? What shared hosting cannot do Yes: to run n8n on a server of your own you need a VPS (or a dedicated server) with root access. It cannot be done...
Automation & n8n 355 Installing n8n with Docker Compose on a VPS n8n is installed on a VPS with Docker Compose: one file describes the container, one command starts it, and the...
Automation & n8n 342 n8n behind HTTPS on your own domain To use n8n properly you need an address such as n8n.yourcompany.com, with a padlock. There are four pieces: a DNS...
Automation & n8n 292 n8n webhooks: test URL, production URL, and why they do not fire An n8n Webhook node has two addresses: a test one and a production one. The test address answers only while the...
Automation & n8n 311 Connecting n8n to e-mail: SMTP and IMAP For n8n to send e-mail you use SMTP; to read it, IMAP. Either way n8n signs in to a mailbox like any e-mail program:...
Automation & n8n 299 Connecting n8n to Google Sheets For n8n to read and write a Google Sheets spreadsheet it needs a credential proving to Google that n8n is allowed to...
Automation & n8n 281 n8n and WhatsApp: a message flow with Evolution API n8n does not talk to WhatsApp on its own. The usual flow puts Evolution API in the middle: it is the bridge to...
Automation & n8n 291 n8n and WordPress: posts and WooCommerce orders n8n talks to WordPress through WordPress’s own REST API. That allows two things: n8n can create or update posts on...
Automation & n8n 278 n8n and your database: the MySQL and PostgreSQL nodes n8n’s MySQL and PostgreSQL nodes let a workflow query, insert and update rows directly in a database. The node is...
Automation & n8n 273 Backing up n8n: workflows, credentials and the encryption key An n8n backup you can restore holds three things: the data (workflows, executions, credentials), the encryption key...
Automation & n8n 280 Updating n8n safely You update n8n by pulling the new image and recreating the container. Your data stays, because it lives in the...
Automation & n8n 235 n8n running out of memory: the causes When n8n runs out of memory, either the system kills the container (and Docker restarts it, without telling you) or...
Automation & n8n 268 n8n Schedule Trigger or a cron job: which to use Use the n8n scheduler (the Schedule Trigger node) when the job is about connecting applications and you want to see...
Automation & n8n 253 Securing n8n: access, credentials and exposed webhooks An n8n holds the keys to everything it automates: e-mail, sheets, shop, WhatsApp. Whoever gets into it reaches all...
Automation & n8n 246 What a webhook is, and how to test one with curl A webhook is an address on the internet that receives a notice when something happens in another application....
Automation & n8n 310 Cron jobs worth setting up on a small website: seven ideas that save time A cron job is for anything you would otherwise repeat by hand at the same time every day or week: taking a copy of...
Automation & n8n 294 A cron job that does not run or sends no output: a checklist Most of the time the cron job does run, and fails for one of six reasons: an incomplete path, an unprotected % sign,...
Automation & n8n 265 Cron schedule examples: every 15 minutes, weekdays at 8, the first of the month A cron schedule has five fields, in this order: minute, hour, day of the month, month and day of the week. An...
Automation & n8n 326 Sending website form entries to a spreadsheet automatically There are three roads for every enquiry from a form on your site to end up in a spreadsheet: a Google Form in place...
Automation & n8n 313 Zapier, Make or n8n: which kind of automation tool suits a small business All three do the same job: when something happens in one application, they do something in another, without you...
Automation & n8n 276 Sending alerts to Telegram from your website or a script To get a notice on your phone whenever something happens on your site, Telegram is one of the simplest roads: you...
Automation & n8n 283 A scheduled report by e-mail: a script, a cron job and an SMTP account To get a summary of the site in your e-mail every morning (the day’s orders, enquiries received, new sign-ups) you...
Automation & n8n 305 Recurring invoices and payment reminders: automating the follow-up for a service business In a service business (retainers, maintenance, monthly fees) it pays to automate issuing the invoice and the payment...
Automation & n8n 306 Posting to social networks automatically: what automation can and cannot do You can make every new article on your site produce a social post, but the best way to do it is to automate the...
Automation & n8n 238 Saving files to Google Drive automatically: form attachments, exports and backups There are four ways to take files from your site or your server into Google Drive without dragging them by hand: a...
Automation & n8n 322 Airtable or Notion behind a simple automation: tokens, sharing and limits Airtable and Notion work well as a small “database” that your team sees and edits, and that an automation (n8n, a...
Automation & n8n 305 n8n workflow failed: reading the error, retrying and getting an alert When an n8n workflow fails, the executions list shows which one and at what node. From there you have three tools to...
Automation & n8n 313 An automation that worked and suddenly stopped: the usual causes An automation that worked and then stopped has almost never broken by itself: something around it changed. The...
Automation & n8n 309 Calling an AI model from an n8n workflow: sort and summarise incoming messages In an n8n workflow, an AI model does three jobs well: classify a message into a category, summarise a long text and...
Automation & n8n 393 Running a Python script on a schedule in cPanel To run a Python script every day or every hour in cPanel, the recipe is: create a Python application (just to get...
Automation & n8n 479 Running a Node.js script on a schedule in cPanel To schedule a Node.js script in cPanel, create a Node.js application (to get the right version and the node_modules...
Automation & n8n 259 Getting an alert when your site goes down: a simple uptime check To know your site is down before a customer tells you, you need something that visits it from outside, now and then,...
Automation & n8n 271 Automatic file transfers: scheduled SFTP and rsync from a script To send or fetch files every night without opening FileZilla, use a cron job that runs the sftp command with an...
Automation & n8n 290 Receiving a webhook in PHP and checking its signature A webhook is a request another service makes to you when something happens. In a PHP file on your site you receive...
Automation & n8n 282 Which tasks are worth automating first, and how to map one before you build The tasks worth automating are those that are frequent, predictable, boring and low-risk: copying data from one...
Automation & n8n 243 Adding a human approval step to an automation A human approval step is a point in the flow where the automation stops, shows a person what it is about to do, and...
Automation & n8n 141 Synchronous or asynchronous: why a payment or SMS confirmation arrives later The short answer: with a synchronous request, your site asks and waits until it has the final answer, as when it...
Automation & n8n 113 An API key or token has leaked: what to do, in the right order The short answer: if an API key, a token or a webhook secret has turned up somewhere it should not (a public...