Why Do I Need To Create An External Cron Job?
Wondering why you need to create an external cron job?
What is Cron?
Cron is what performs scheduled tasks in the backend of your site, like...
- Sending emails or processing funnels
- Publishing scheduled posts
- Checking for plugin updates
The problem with internal WP Cron.
The internal WP Cron system built into WordPress is actually a FAKE pseudo cron system.
The way it works is every time someone visits your website, meaning any public traffic, a second request is loaded and requests the wp-cron.php file.
This means for every visitor, your site is loaded twice. If you have a high traffic site, your site can timeout because of too many requests in a short period of time.
But if you have too little traffic, the wp-cron.php file will never be loaded, meaning scheduled tasks like sending emails will never run.
The solution!
Disable the internal cron system, and set up an external cron job. This will ping the wp-cron.php file on a consistent interval, meaning tasks will run when they are supposed to, and your site won't timeout because of a surge in traffic.
