The default editor for crontab in every Linux distro I've seen is vi. If you'd like to edit with nano, for example, you can use:
Code:
[hector@troy ~]$ export EDITOR=nano
[hector@troy ~]$ crontab -e
As for the second question, your cronjob should either build the PATH you need or use absolute paths to programs. So, presuming that's the location of the php program, your idea is probably correct.