PHP-MySQLi-Database-Class | PHP MySQL class , which utilizes MySQLi | SQL Database library

I'll use an example for this.

Say I'm taking RSS feeds, going through their items, and storing some information about each item in a DB. I'm using SimplePie for processing the feeds, and Josh Campbell's MySQLi wrapper for the DB actions.

For each entry, I will save the item title, the time the item was published (retrieved from the feed), the time the item was added to my DB (defined at the time of inserting to DB), and an auto-incremented ID assigned to each.

I will use an example to demonstrate this.

Assuming I have a MySQL DB where I place paths to files to be uploaded to S3, and a status column where each file is attributed either a pending or uploaded string.

I have a PHP script, upload.php, which I can run with php upload.php and receive the output logged to my terminal as the script progresses. I would like to set up a cron job that runs the script at certain intervals, say every 30 minutes, where each time the DB is queried and the files which hold a pending status are processed for upload.

Now, I want to be able to track the progress of the script, regardless of its current status in the frontend (if currently no pending items are in the DB).

While I would appreciate any specific suggestion on how to do this, my question is also regarding best practice - meaning, what is the proper way to do this?

Here's an example of a script of such (it's using the Joshcam MysqliDb)