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I finally got a cron job working in my Cpanel with hostgator + Akeeba Backup Pro + (optional) dropbox and wanted to share what I did to maybe help someone else searching Google like I did.

In Cpanel:
1) hostgator as of 12/5/2013 still runs PHP 5.2, and the handler code to use 5.3 they have you place in an .htaccess file according to these directions ARE WRONG (but the process is right). Hostgator support (1.5 hours worth) gave me the correct to paste in .htaccess (follow the directions in the article with this code)

# Use PHP 5.3
AddHandler application/x-httpd-php53 .php

2) from Cpanel > Advanced section of buttons > Cron Jobs
- add this script (the "yourserverroot/yourusername" can be found in Cpanel, bottom left under "account information" > Home Directory)
/opt/php53/bin/php /yourserver/yourusername/public_html/cli/akeeba-backup.php -profile=1

3) optional: in Joomla. Components > Akeeba Backup > Profiles Management > "configure" > "data processing engine" dropdown > I chose Dropbox, you choose whatever cloud storage > "Configure" beside the dropdown. Follow the steps.

Hope this helps someone else. My high school students and I do multimedia and web work with local businesses through our site rockettech.org. Enjoy!

Thank you for the notes! My observations indicate that Hostgator is killing the CRON job after two minutes, so you may still have trouble with your backup even after all this. If your backup fails, check the time stamps in the backup log, if it stops at the two minute mark, you know what happened. I have not tried to get them to extend the time limit, so I don't know what their reaction would be.