title: Difference between using Message Queue vs Plain Cron Jobs with PHP
body: <p>We have a large web application built on PHP. This application allows scheduling tweets and wall posts and there are scheduled emails that go out from the server.</p>
  
  <p>By 'scheduled', I mean that these are PHP scripts scheduled to run at particular time using <code>cron</code>. There are about 7 PHP files that do the above jobs.</p>
  
  <p>I have been hearing about Message Queues. Can anyone explain if Message Queues are the best fit in this scenario? Do Message Queues execute PHP scripts? or do we need to configure this entirely differently? What are the advantages / disadvantages?</p>