{eac}CronSettings & {eac}CronRouting

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Plugin URI: https://github.com/EarthAsylum/eacCronSettings
Author: EarthAsylum Consulting
Stable tag: 1.7.3
Last Updated: 04-Aug-2025
Requires at least: 5.8
Tested up to: 6.8
Requires PHP: 8.1
Contributors: earthasylum,kevinburkholder
Donate link: https://github.com/sponsors/EarthAsylum
License: GPLv3 or later
License URI: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
GitHub URI: https://github.com/EarthAsylum/eacCronSettings

{eac}CronSettings - Site wide settings and actions for WP-Cron / Action Scheduler.

{eac}CronRouting - Reroute WP-Cron events to Action Scheduler or Action Scheduler actions to WP-Cron.

Description

WP-Cron is built in to WordPress and is used to schedule and run jobs or tasks in the background. By default, WP-Cron is triggered when a page is loaded on your web site making it dependent on web site traffic.

See: https://developer.wordpress.org/plugins/cron/

WordPress checks for any events due to run on every page load. When an event is found, WordPress spawns a request to wp-cron.php to run the scheduled events.

If your site has infrequent visitors, scheduled tasks might run late or not at all. On busy sites, every page load triggering WP-Cron can add unnecessary overhead.

Action Scheduler is included with WooCommerce and other plugins and is a more advanced, scalable system for scheuling, running and logging large sets of background tasks. Action Scheduler is dependent on WP-Cron to initiate its queue runner process so is also dependent on web site traffic.

See: https://actionscheduler.org/

The default WP-Cron behavior can be disabled and replaced with a more reliable time-based trigger, such as a server cron event or third-party cron service, making it more timely and less dependent on web site traffic.

{eac}CronSettings and {eac}CronRouting are used to provide some controls and efficiencies over WP-Cron and/or Action Scheduler while not necessitating any other code changes in WordPress.

{eac}CronSettings

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By default, this plugin...

• Disables the normal WP-Cron behavior, assuming an external WP-Cron trigger (DISABLE_WP_CRON).
• Sets the minimum cron run interval to 5 minutes (WP_CRON_MINIMUM_INTERVAL).
• Adds a 'Monthly' interval based on the days in the current month (WP_CRON_SCHEDULE_INTERVALS).
• Increases Action Scheduler run time limit from 30 to 60 seconds (AS_RUN_TIME_LIMIT)
• Changes Action Scheduler clean-up retention period from 1 month to 1 week (AS_CLEANUP_RETENTION_PERIOD).
• Adds 'failed' actions to Action Scheduler's automatic clean-up.
• Changes Action Scheduler clean-up batch size from 20 to 100 (AS_CLEANUP_BATCH_SIZE).

Optionally...

• Caches WP-Cron events in memory and to a custom table, removing the 'cron' option from the WP options table (WP_CRON_CACHE_EVENTS).
• Disable the Action Scheduler queue runner (DISABLE_AS_QUEUE_RUNNER).
• Log scheduling errors (WP_CRON_LOG_ERRORS).
• Log scheduling events for debugging (WP_CRON_DEBUG).

Defined Constants

The constants used in {eac}CronSettings should be reviewed and changed to suit your requirements. Constants may be set as needed, deleted or 'commented-out' if not needed.

Alternatively, these constants may be defined in your wp-config.php file.

DISABLE_WP_CRON true | false (default: true)

Does not disable or change WP scheduling functions but disables the default internal wp-cron process. The internal process may be disabled when triggered by a server based cron event or an external request to /wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron like:

• server-based cron
  wget -q -O - https://domain.com/wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron >/dev/null 2>&1
wp cron event run –due-now
• EasyCron
• UptimeRobot
• cron-job.org
• AWS EventBridge
• Google Cloud Scheduler
• some other external trigger

WP_CRON_CACHE_EVENTS true | false | 'revert' (default: true)

Store WP-Cron events in a custom table rather than 'cron' option in the WP options table.

• Caches events in memory and to a custom table (see: {eac}KeyValue).
• Removes cron from the WP options table and $alloptions array.
• Lessens database reads/writes.
• Significantly reduces overhead.

This will generate The cron event list could not be saved error in wp-cron.php when WordPress updates an event. This can be ignored since the event list has been saved to the custom table and cache.

Temporarily set this constant to 'revert' to revert this process and restore the cron option from cache.

WP_CRON_MINIMUM_INTERVAL int (seconds) (default: 5 minutes)

Set a minimum interval time for all wp-cron events.
Some events (like Action Scheduler queue runner) may be scheduled every minute or less, which may be excessive for your environment. This option forces a minimum time between executions for all events.

WP_CRON_SCHEDULE_INTERVALS array (default: monthly)

Add or change WP-Cron schedule intervals used when scheduling recurring events.
Create new or override existing intervals (schedules).

The array format is:

'schedule_name'    => [
    'interval'  => int (seconds),
    'display'   => "short description",
],

WP_CRON_LOG_ERRORS true | false (default: undefined)

Log wp-cron scheduling errors.
Logs to the {eac}Doojigger debugging log OR the system error log.

WP_CRON_DEBUG true | false (default: undefined)

Debug certain wp-cron scheduling actions.
Logs to the {eac}Doojigger debugging log OR the system error log.

DISABLE_AS_QUEUE_RUNNER true | false (default: undefined)

Disable the Action Scheduler queue runner.
Does not disable or change Action Scheduler functions but prevents actions from running via the queue runner triggered by WP-Cron. Like WP-Cron, Action Scheduler actions may be triggered by an external process (server cron) using a WP-CLI command.

AS_RUN_TIME_LIMIT int (seconds) (default: 60)

Set Action Scheduler run time limit (normally 30 seconds).
Increase this if you have unusually long running actions.

AS_CLEANUP_RETENTION_PERIOD int (seconds) (default: 1 week)

Set Action Scheduler retention time.
Action Scheduler retains completed actions for 1 month, and failed actions indefinitely, which could lead to a bloated database table. This option can reduce the retention period for both types of actions.

AS_CLEANUP_BATCH_SIZE int (count) (default: 100)

Set Action Scheduler clean-up batch size.
Action Scheduler normally purges only 20 records at a time in its clean-up process.

{eac}CronRouting

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This plugin facilitates...

• Routing WP-Cron events to Action Scheduler actions.
• Routing Action Scheduler actions to WP-Cron events.

Defined Constants

The WP_CRON_REROUTE_EVENTS constant used in {eac}CronRouting should be reviewed and changed to suit your requirements.

Alternatively, this constant may be defined in your wp-config.php file.

WP_CRON_REROUTE_EVENTS WP_TO_AS ('wp-as') | AS_TO_WP ('as-wp') | false (default: false)

Route WP-Cron events to Action Scheduler or Action Scheduler to WP-Cron.
Currently scheduled events are not changed.

Action Scheduler is not available until the WordPress init action.

• WP-Cron events scheduled or checked before init are not routed through Action Scheduler.

Action Scheduler doesn't provide hooks for several rescheduling/unscheduling functions.

• Only new Action Scheduler actions can be routed to WP-Cron, scheduled recuring events remain in Action Scheduler.

Neither option offers a complete solution but most events/actions will end up being rerouted to the desired process. You may need to manually remove events/actions from one process once they have been routed to the other process. Recurring Action Scheduler actions may need to be manually removed in order to force rescheduling to wp-Cron.

Installation

{eac}CronSettings

1. Edit eacCronSettings.php and set the defined constants to fit your configuration needs.
2. Drop the eacCronSettings.php file into your wp-content/mu-plugins folder.

{eac}CronRouting

1. Edit eacCronRouting.php and set the defined constant to fit your configuration needs.
2. Drop the eacCronRouting.php file into your wp-content/mu-plugins folder.

Other Notes

See: {eac}KeyValue, An easy to use, efficient, key-value pair storage mechanism for WordPress that takes advatage of the WP Object Cache.

Recommended: WP Crontrol, WP Crontrol enables you to take control of the scheduled cron events on your WordPress website or WooCommerce store.

Changelog

Version 1.7.3 – August 4, 2025

• Default WP_CRON_CACHE_EVENTS to false.
• Set cron_schedules filter priority to PHP_INT_MAX.

Version 1.7.2 – June 15, 2025

• Removed use of WP Object Cache and simply holds event list in memory.
• Improved error handling.

Version 1.7.1 – June 5, 2025

• Made compatible with forthcoming {eac}KeyValue plugin.