How To Add Cron Jobs to WordPress

RunCloud makes setting up and running cron jobs from your dashboard simple without messing with server settings. (Refer to our previous post to learn why cron jobs are necessary for WordPress.)

Adding a Cron Job

There are multiple ways to add a cron job to RunCloud. However, we recommend using RunCloud’s built-in server cron functionality to run cron jobs.

Method 1: Use RunCloud Server Cron Functionality (Recommended)

The most straightforward way to enable server-level cron is to do so directly in the RunCloud dashboard.

Navigate to your Web Application, open the General Settings tab, and locate the WordPress Config section. From there, you can turn on Server Cron with a single toggle.

This action automatically disables the default virtual WordPress cron (wp-cron.php) and replaces it with a system-level cron job on your server. This means there’s no need to connect to your server via SSH, edit configuration files, or manually add custom crontab entries.

However, using this RunCloud setting doesn’t need to limit you. If you want to create a custom cron job manually, you can still do so using the steps below.

Method 2: Using WP CLI

Follow the steps below to schedule cron jobs for both single-site and multisite WordPress installations on RunCloud:

First, log in to your RunCloud dashboard and copy the root path of your web application.

Next, navigate to the server page and click “CronJob” in the left menu.

Click “Add New Job” to create a new job.

On the next screen, you can specify the details about the job. Provide a descriptive name, and in the user field, enter the name of the web application’s owner.

In the “Vendor Binary” drop-down, select (Write your own, inside command). The following steps are slightly different depending on your WordPress environment. Pick the option that suits you.

Cron Jobs for Simple WordPress Installation

If you are running a simple WordPress installation, then you can simply copy and paste the following code snippet in the provided text field and replace the /path/to/wordpress/root with your web application’s root path that you copied earlier:

wp cron event run --path="/path/to/wordpress/root" --due-now

The above command will run the WordPress cron scheduler and execute all overdue tasks since the last time this command was run. To ensure overdue tasks are completed regularly, set the job frequency to 5 minutes in the drop-down menu. Finally, click on “Create Cron Job” to save it.

Cron Jobs for Multisite WordPress Installations

The other methods for scheduling cron jobs in WordPress multisite networks require manually adding each site’s URL individually, which can be time-consuming and requires frequent updates when sites are added or removed.

RunCloud experts have developed a more efficient command that automatically retrieves and executes cron jobs across all active subsites in your network, streamlining the process. To learn more about this topic, read our blog post, Pipes vs Xargs: Which One to Use When Writing Bash Scripts in Linux.

To implement this improved method for WordPress multisite installations, follow the steps described above and enter the following command in the provided text box:

wp_path="/path/to/wordpress/root" ; wp site list --field=url --deleted=0 --archived=0 --path=$wp_path | xargs -I {} wp cron event run --due-now --url="{}" --quiet --path=$wp_path

After pasting the above command, you need to replace “/path/to/wordpress/root” with your WordPress multisite network’s root path that you copied earlier:

Finally, use the drop-down menu to set the job frequency to 5 minutes and click “Create Cron Job” to finalize. This method ensures that cron events run for all active sites in your multisite network without requiring manual updates when adding or removing sites.

Method 3: By Executing wp-cron.php

To add a cron job to a WordPress application on RunCloud, open the web application dashboard and note the application’s owner and the PHP version.

Next, copy the website’s public path to your clipboard. This is where the wp-cron.php file is stored.

After you have copied the path, open the “Cronjob” menu and click on the “Add New Job” button to create a new entry.

On the next screen, you can configure the job. First, provide a descriptive name for the job, and then specify the user account that will run it on your server (the application’s owner).

Next, select the PHP version for your application from the vendor binary drop-down.

After that, you need to specify the path to the cron file – simply paste the path to the public directory that we copied before, and then add /wp-cron.php after it.

Finally, specify how often you want this cron job to run. For most WordPress websites, a frequency of every 10 minutes is good enough.

Disabling WordPress’s WP-Cron

After manually setting up the cron job on your server, you need to explicitly disable WordPress’s cron execution. You can do this without leaving the RunCloud dashboard.

Open the “File Manager” page for your WordPress site and look for wp-config.php. Click on it to open a text editor in a new window.

Look for the line that says ‘Add any custom values between this line and the “stop editing” line.‘ and paste the following code below it:

define( 'DISABLE_WP_CRON', true );

Once you save the changes, WordPress will stop executing the default cron job on page loads.

Verifying Cron Schedule

There are several ways to verify that your cron jobs are executed correctly in your WordPress installation. But before you can do that, you should wait a couple of hours and give the cron job time to run its scheduled tasks.

Using WordPress CLI

One of the most straightforward methods is to use the WordPress Command Line Interface (WP-CLI). Navigate to the root directory of your multisite installation and run the following command:

wp cron event list

This command displays a list of all scheduled cron events, including their next run time and recurrence. It provides a quick overview of what’s scheduled and when it’s set to run next.

In the above example, we can see that no events are due now and that they have missed their schedule. Therefore, we can rest assured that the cron job is working correctly.

Checking System Logs

You can also verify cron job execution by examining the Linux system logs. Log in to your server with administrator privileges, then run the provided command to view the log entries for your cron jobs.

The following command searches the system log for entries related to your provided keyword (the name of your site) and displays the last 10 entries.

grep -i "site-name" /var/log/syslog | tail

In the above example, replace the “site-name” with the name of your WordPress website (in the RunCloud dashboard).

The above example shows the date and time when the cron job was executed in the highlighted sections. This information can help you confirm if the job is being triggered at the scheduled times.