[wp-trac] Re: [WordPress Trac] #4566: Cron Not Getting Called (fsockopen failing)

[WordPress Trac]

#4566: Cron Not Getting Called (fsockopen failing)
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 Reporter:  chewblocka             |        Owner:  Nazgul  
     Type:  defect                 |       Status:  assigned
 Priority:  normal                 |    Milestone:  2.4     
Component:  Administration         |      Version:  2.2.1   
 Severity:  normal                 |   Resolution:          
 Keywords:  cron future has-patch  |  
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Comment (by intoxination):

 I think this is a bigger problem then we actually realize. I have had 2
 people ask me why their crons aren't firing and both of them turned out to
 be hosting issues. They have been upgrading constantly, so they have had
 cron since in came out in 2.1 in January. They just never noticed it
 before because they don't do future posting. In both cases it was plugins
 they added that use cron and they noticed it wasn't working. Since more
 plugins are starting to use cron, I think it's time to come up with a
 reasonable solution to the problem.

 What I ended up doing for these two was create a simple plugin to remove
 to wp_cron hook. Then i had them modify wp_cron to get rid of the "check"
 and add wp-cron.php to a crontab in CPanel.

 This might be something to consider doing in the core, especially since
 there are so many different ways that cron can break by hosting rules. It
 could even utilize the new update alerts in admin. Basically if a cron
 doesn't fire it sets a no_cron option (or something like that). During the
 update checks, this option is checked. If it exists then the admins are
 notified in the update box (or even via email) about the problem. With a
 link to a codex page on using crontab. Of course on that page we have to
 make sure the users know that if they set crontab to run every 5 minutes
 and set a post to publish at 10:13, it won't post until 10:15.

 I know it takes away from the simplicity factor on using WP (some), but
 IMHO this would be the easiest route to getting cron running on hosts that
 block the fsock method. The ease factor would be reflected in the
 documentation on the codex page (perhaps including CPanel screenshots).

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Ticket URL: <http://trac.wordpress.org/ticket/4566#comment:10>
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