Question

I would like to be able to start a second script (either PHP or Python) when a page is loaded and have it continue to run after the user cancels/navigates away is this possible?

Answer 1

You can send Connection:Close headers, which finishes the page for your user, but enables you to execute things ‘after page loads’.

There is a simple way to ignore user abort (see php manual too):

ignore_user_abort(true);