One of the best things about WordPress is that it allows users to schedule and automate post publishing. It’s a useful feature that can be a life-saver for anyone doesn’t want to constantly worry about manually publishing content every time.
You can enjoy your vacation in Maldives, sit back and relax, while WordPress automatically publishes your scheduled posts. This feature takes care of your sleep, and you don’t have to wake up in the odd hours to post content for the global audiences, especially if you have the most comfortable Puffy mattress to sleep on.
It’s annoying, especially if you have a set a schedule that needs to be followed. How do you prevent it from happening again? Worry not! In this article, we will cover the reason why WordPress missed schedule error happens and how to stop it. Let’s start!
Why WordPress Fails to Publish Scheduled Posts?
WordPress misses scheduled posts mostly because of one thing: a failed cron job, albeit there are other reasons.
To put it simply, cron jobs are pre-scheduled tasks that are automatically done without any further human intervention. It’s a task that is set up to be repeated at a certain interval.
It’s a time-based command and script that allows users to post, back up, or delete files from WordPress sites on a schedule – set up by users and run by the servers automatically.
However, WordPress cron jobs are not tied to the clock – they have to be triggered by a page load. Meaning that any scheduled task and post will only be executed when someone visits your site.
If for example, you schedule a post to be published at 10 am yet no one visits your site at the time, then cron job won’t activate and you’ll get WordPress missed schedule error.
How to Fix WordPress Missed Schedule Error?
You can efficiently fix and prevent WordPress missed schedule errors to happen again with the help of plugins. Let’s have a quick look at a few of the best plugins that are able to accomplish this.
1. Scheduled Post Trigger
Scheduled Post Trigger is an effective WordPress plugin that publishes the post once your site is visited by anyone regardless of the time. It runs a script to check if there’s any failed task to be published and does it immediately.
Here’s how to install and activate this plugin:
- Log in to your WordPress Dashboard.
- Head to the left navigation menu and select Plugins -> Add New.
- Search Scheduled Post Trigger in the search bar and click Install Now.
- Once the installation finishes, press Activate.
And you’re all set! No further configurations needed and you don’t have to ever worry about WordPress cron jobs messing up your schedule.
2. WP Missed Schedule
WP Missed Schedule is an excellent plugin that checks if there are any unpublished scheduled posts on your sites. It automatically reviews and publishes missed posts every 15 minutes – it doesn’t rely on traffic or any other trigger to work.
However, WP Missed Schedule is not available in the WordPress plugin directory anymore. You have to download the plugin directly from GitHub and upload it manually to your site.
Here’s what you need to do to manually upload and activate this plugin:
- Go to the Github plugin repository and head to Clone or Download option. Click on it, and choose Download Zip.
- Login to your WordPress dashboard and navigate to Plugins -> Add New Plugin.
- Manually upload the plugin by clicking the Upload Plugin option on the upper part of the menu.
- Select Choose File, upload the zip file you’ve downloaded and click Install Now.
- Finally, press Activate Plugin.
And that’s it! You don’t need to lift a finger to make sure there are no more missed scheduled posts due to failed cron jobs.
To check if the plugin works properly, head to the Plugins -> Installed Plugins and locate WP Missed Schedule, then click on “Miss” to see a list of posts that were corrected and published.
Conclusion
A consistent website update is one of the requirements for maintaining SEO. It’s important to make sure that your site is updated frequently with high-quality content. That said, recurring missed scheduled posts can bring some serious damage to your sites’ traffic and overall performance if not handled properly.
But with the help of the plugins we’ve mentioned in this article, we hope that there will be no more stress for you when it comes to updating content on your sites! Good luck!
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