Cron Manager

Inspect, trigger, and manage all WordPress scheduled events, custom recurrence schedules, and cron health — with a guide to replacing WP-Cron with a real server cron job.

Cron Manager gives you full visibility into WordPress’s scheduling system. It is split into three tabs: Events, Schedules, and Health.

Events tab

The Events tab lists every scheduled cron event sorted by next-run timestamp. A search field at the top lets you filter by hook name.

Next-run colour coding

The next-run time for each event is colour-coded to surface issues at a glance:

Colour	Meaning
Green	Event is scheduled in the future (more than 5 minutes away).
Amber	Event runs in less than 5 minutes.
Red	Event is overdue — its scheduled time has already passed.

Event badges

• A core badge marks events registered by WordPress core. Core events cannot be deleted.
• An argument count badge (e.g. 2 args) appears on events that pass arguments to their callback.

Actions

• Run now (play icon) — triggers the event immediately outside of the normal schedule. The result banner shows the hook name, execution time in milliseconds, and any output or error message.
• Delete (trash icon) — deletes custom (non-core) events. This action is permanent.

Schedules tab

The Schedules tab lists all registered recurrence intervals — both built-in WordPress schedules and any custom ones — showing the key, display name, interval in a human-readable format, and the raw interval in seconds. Custom schedules have a custom badge.

Adding a custom schedule

1. Fill in the schedule details

   In the Add Custom Schedule form at the top of the tab, enter:

   • Key — a lowercase, underscore-separated identifier (e.g. every_2_hours).
   • Display Name — the human-readable label shown in WordPress schedule pickers (e.g. Every 2 Hours).
   • Interval (seconds) — how often the schedule fires. Minimum value is 60.
2. Click Add Schedule

   Click Add Schedule. The new schedule appears in the list immediately and is available to any plugin that calls wp_schedule_event.

To remove a custom schedule, click the trash icon on its row. Built-in WordPress schedules (hourly, twicedaily, daily, weekly) cannot be deleted.

Health tab

The Health tab shows four status cards and a real cron setup guide.

Status cards

WP-Cron

Shows whether WP-Cron is enabled or disabled. A red card means DISABLE_WP_CRON is set to true in wp-config.php — scheduled events will not fire automatically unless you have a real server cron configured.

Overdue

The count of events whose scheduled time has already passed. A non-zero count with an amber card indicates events are being missed, usually because WP-Cron is not running frequently enough.

Lock Timeout

The value of the WP_CRON_LOCK_TIMEOUT constant (default: 60 seconds). This is the minimum gap between cron runs.

Alternate Cron

Whether ALTERNATE_WP_CRON is enabled. Alternate cron uses a redirect-based approach to run events on a separate page request, which can help on hosts that block the standard loopback method.

If there are overdue events, an expandable list below the cards shows each overdue hook and how far past due it is.

Real cron setup

WP-Cron is a pseudo-cron system — it only fires when a visitor loads a page. On low-traffic sites this means scheduled events may run late or not at all. The Real Cron Setup guide explains how to replace it with a proper system cron job.

Setting up a real server cron job

1. Disable WP-Cron

   Add the following line to your wp-config.php to prevent WordPress from running cron on every page load:

   define('DISABLE_WP_CRON', true);
   
2. Open your server crontab

   Log in to your server via SSH and open the crontab for the web server user:

   crontab -e
   
3. Add the cron command

   Add the pre-filled command shown in the Real Cron Setup card. It runs wp-cron.php every 5 minutes via wget:

   */5 * * * * wget -q -O - https://yoursite.com/wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron >/dev/null 2>&1
   

   Replace https://yoursite.com with your actual site URL. The Cron Manager pre-fills this command with your site URL.

4. (Alternative) Use WP-CLI

   If WP-CLI is installed on the server, use it instead of wget. The Real Cron Setup card provides the pre-filled WP-CLI command:

   */5 * * * * cd /path/to/wordpress && wp cron event run --due-now >/dev/null 2>&1
   
5. Verify

   Return to the Health tab and confirm the WP-Cron card shows as disabled (expected, since you set DISABLE_WP_CRON) and that overdue event counts drop to zero after a few minutes.

After setting up a real cron job, the overdue event count in the Health tab should consistently be zero. If events are still accumulating, check that the crontab command is running correctly with grep CRON /var/log/syslog.