How to View and Control WordPress Cron Jobs: An Expert‘s 2023 Guide

As a WordPress consultant with over 10 years of experience, I‘ve seen firsthand how problematic cron jobs can cripple site performance if left unchecked.

But the good news is, with the right approach you can easily view, edit and control automated WordPress cron tasks.

In this comprehensive guide, I‘ll share my proven method for better understanding and managing cron events using the WP Crontrol plugin.

Why You Should Control Your WordPress Cron Jobs

Before digging into the how-to, let me quickly explain what WordPress cron jobs are, and why it‘s important not to ignore them:

WordPress cron allows scheduled tasks to execute automatically based on triggers or timers. The most common examples include:

• Checking for updates (plugins, themes, WordPress core)
• Clearing caches and stale data
• Publishing scheduled content
• Sending emails and notifications
• Running backups
• Executing plugin-specific routines

I‘ve seen sites where 40+ cron events were stacked up, causing massive slowdowns.

Others failed to run properly and broke functionality without the site owner‘s knowledge.

Most shared hosts strictly limit PHP execution times. So when inefficient cron events are allowed to pile up, resource exhaustion causes performance issues.

How Often Should Your Cron Jobs Run?

For most standard WordPress installs, reasonable cron job frequencies look like:

However, optimal timing depends on your site traffic, hosting environment, plugins in use and more. There is no one size fits all.

Monitoring usage over time and continually optimizing is key for peak performance.

Identify Problem Cron Jobs Slowing Down Your Site

I‘ve consulted for many sites suffering from crippling slowdowns. Upon investigation, inefficient cron jobs were almost always part of the problem.

Some past clients had expensive premium plugins with bugs leading to excessive cron stacks.

Others simply had too much scheduled activity piled up from lack of optimization.

I recommend the WP Crontrol plugin to instantly identify problem jobs.

Once installed:

1. Visit WP Admin > Tools > Cron Events

This displays every cron event active on your site:

2. Look For These Warning Signs

• Frequent recurrence intervals
• Highly repetitive jobs
• Stacking up over time
• Unfamiliar hooks from plugins/themes

3. Click "Edit" to Adjust Settings

Try less frequent recurrence first before fully disabling any jobs.

Add Your Own Custom Cron Jobs

WP Crontrol also allows registering custom cron events without code:

1. Give the job hook a name
2. Set next run time
3. Pick interval frequency
4. Click "Add Cron Event"

Then bind a function to tell WordPress what script/task to run when triggered:

add_action( ‘my_cron_hook‘, ‘run_my_function‘ );

function run_my_function() {

  // My cron job commands

}

For advanced cases, I still recommend hiring a WordPress developer to optimize problematic cron issues. But WP Crontrol provides an easy starting point for every site owner.

Now over to you! Carefully reviewing and controlling cron activity is crucial for peak WordPress performance.

Let me know if you have any other questions in the comments!