Missed schedule 📝 WordPress

WordPress: Missed schedule — scheduled posts not publishing (WP-Cron not running)

WP-Cron didn’t fire at the scheduled time, so scheduled posts and tasks (backups, emails, WooCommerce jobs) are late.

Seen on: WordPress

Meaning

WP-Cron runs only when someone visits the site and requires loopback requests to work. Low traffic, DISABLE_WP_CRON without a real cron job, caching, basic auth or blocked loopbacks stop it.

Common causes

  • Low traffic (no visits to trigger cron)
  • DISABLE_WP_CRON true without a server cron
  • Loopback requests blocked (firewall, basic auth, SSL)
  • Full-page caching preventing PHP execution

⚡ Quick fix

  1. Disable WP-Cron and run it from system cron every 5 minutes
  2. Fix loopback requests (Site Health)
  3. Check scheduled events with WP Crontrol or wp cron event list

Detailed fix by platform

Linux

  1. bash
    # crontab -e (as the web user)
*/5 * * * * cd /var/www/html && wp cron event run --due-now >/dev/null 2>&1

WordPress

  1. define('DISABLE_WP_CRON', true); // only with the system cron above

How to diagnose

  1. Cron — wp cron event list
  2. Loopback — Site Health status
  3. Config — DISABLE_WP_CRON

🔧 Still not fixed?

Many errors look alike. If the steps above didn’t solve it, one of these is probably what you’re facing:

🧠 Still stuck? Analyze your error

Paste the full message, response headers or stack trace — we'll detect the platform and point to the most likely cause.