Building a Multi-Region Cron System for Video Freshness

Introduction Keeping video content fresh across multiple regions requires a well-designed cron system. At ViralVidVault , a single cron command handles fetching trending videos from 7 European regions, refreshing stale content, and cleaning up old records. Here's how it all fits together. The Cron Architecture One script, multiple steps, executed sequentially: <?php // cron/fetch_videos.php declare ( strict_types = 1 ); require_once __DIR__ . '/../vendor/autoload.php' ; $startTime = microtime ( true ); $db = new Database ( __DIR__ . '/../data/videos.db' ); $youtube = new YouTubeClient ( $_ENV [ 'YOUTUBE_API_KEY' ]); $logger = new CronLogger ( __DIR__ . '/../data/cron.log' ); $regions = explode ( ',' , $_ENV [ 'FETCH_REGIONS' ] ?? 'US,GB,PL,NL,SE,NO,AT' ); try { // STEP 1: Fetch globally popular videos $logger -> info ( 'Step 1: Fetching popular videos...' ); $popular = $youtube -> getPopular ( maxResults : 50 ); $db -> upsertVideos ( $popular ); $logger -> info ( "Step 1 complete: " .