{"id":41474,"date":"2021-05-18T11:39:29","date_gmt":"2021-05-18T08:39:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themeisle.com\/blog\/?p=41474"},"modified":"2022-02-17T15:04:06","modified_gmt":"2022-02-17T13:04:06","slug":"disable-wp-cron","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themeisle.com\/blog\/disable-wp-cron\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Disable wp-cron in WordPress (and Use a Real Cron Job Instead)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Want to disable wp-cron and replace it with your own real<\/em> cron job?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Replacing wp-cron with your own cron job can help you run your site’s scheduled tasks more reliably and also reduce the load on your server for high-traffic sites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this post, we’ll explain what wp-cron is and why you might want to disable it if you’re not familiar with this tactic. Then, we’ll show you step-by-step how to disable wp-cron and replace it with a real cron job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you’re already familiar with what wp-cron is and why you might want to disable it, you can click here to jump straight to the tutorial<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n

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What is wp-cron?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Wp-cron is a file\/feature that’s responsible for controlling your WordPress site’s time-sensitive tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, let’s say you scheduled a post to publish next Wednesday at 9:30 AM. Wp-cron makes sure that happens on time (or at least as close to “on time” as possible – more on that in a second).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to making sure core WordPress features function, many WordPress plugins also rely on wp-cron to handle schedule-sensitive parts of the plugin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you want to view all the scheduled tasks on your site, you can use a free plugin like WP-Crontrol<\/a>. If you go to Tools \u2192 Cron Events<\/strong>, you can see all the automatic tasks that WordPress has scheduled to run and how frequently they execute:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

As the name suggests, wp-cron comes from the more general cron scheduling system that’s used by Unix operating systems. However, wp-cron is distinct from those scheduling systems and wp-cron is not a real cron job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The big difference is that wp-cron only executes when you or another person visits your website (either on the front-end or in your dashboard). Whenever someone visits your site, WordPress will run the wp-cron.php file and check for scheduled tasks. If there is a task, it will then execute it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, this can pose a problem for low-traffic sites because wp-cron only runs when there’s a visit. For example, let’s say you scheduled that post for Wednesday at 9:30 AM, but your site doesn’t receive any visits at that time. In fact, your site doesn’t receive its next visit until 11:30 AM.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Well, in that scenario, your post wouldn’t publish until 11:30 AM because wp-cron wasn’t able to run when there weren’t any visits. It would still show the timestamp as 9:30 AM – it just wouldn’t actually appear on your site until 11:30 AM.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Why should you disable wp-cron?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

There are two reasons behind disabling wp-cron and replacing it with your own dedicated cron job:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Reliability<\/strong> – as the example above illustrated, wp-cron isn’t always reliable on low-traffic sites<\/a> because it needs a website visit to execute. With a real cron job, you can set your tasks to execute every X minutes no matter what<\/strong> – even if there are no visits.<\/li>
  2. Performance<\/strong> – on high-traffic sites<\/a>, some people don’t like wp-cron because WordPress will run the wp-cron.php file on almost every single visit. WordPress tries to limit this by not running it more than once per 60 seconds, but there can still be performance drags for various technical reasons, such as simultaneous visits both triggering wp-cron<\/em>.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    In a nutshell, learning how to disable wp-cron can be useful for both low-traffic and high-traffic sites, though for different reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n

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    How to disable wp-cron (and set up a real cron job)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    Now that you know the “what” and “why”, let’s get into the “how.” We’ll show you how to disable wp-cron and then replace it with your own server cron job (or another solution<\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    There are two parts to the process:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    1. You need to disable the built-in wp-cron feature so that WordPress doesn’t run wp-cron.php on every visit. To do this, you just need to add a line of code to your site’s wp-config.php file.<\/li>
    2. You need to set up your own cron job to call wp-cron.php on the schedule that you set. With this, you can run wp-cron.php on a specific schedule, whether or not your site receives traffic.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n
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      Disable wp-cron in WordPress<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

      To disable wp-cron, you need to add one line of code to your site’s wp-config.php file<\/a>. Because this is a key configuration file, we highly recommend that you back up your site<\/a> before making changes (or at least make a copy of the original wp-config.php file so that you can re-upload the working copy if something goes wrong)<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      To access the wp-config.php file, you can either:<\/p>\n\n\n\n