Are you facing the missed schedule post error in WordPress?

This guide is for you.

WordPress comes with a built-in feature that allows you to easily schedule posts to be automatically published at a later time. 

However, sometimes you may notice that scheduled posts don’t get published at all.

Scheduling a WordPress post in advance is simple. You wrap up editing, set a date, and then you’re free to focus on other things.

The underlying functionality that makes scheduling posts in WordPress possible is called a "cron", and on occasion it doesn’t run as expected. 

However, there are a couple of ways you can prevent this problem from happening in the future.

Here at Ibmi Media, as part of our Server Management Services, we regularlary help our WordPress Customers to resolve errors affecting their websites.

In this context, we shall look into how to easily fix the missed schedule post error in WordPress. This will allow you to ensure that your scheduled posts are published on time.

Nature of the WordPress Missed Scheduled Posts issue?

Your WordPress hosting environment or plugin conflicts may cause WordPress to miss scheduled posts.

Generally, when you schedule a WordPress post to be published later, WordPress uses a technology called 'Cron' or 'WordPress Cron' to automatically publish your post on time.

However, if your WordPress hosting server or a plugin is affecting the cron jobs, then WordPress would miss the scheduled tasks such as publishing scheduled posts.

Your other cron jobs may still work occasionally like checking for updates or deleting auto-saved drafts. That's because once the publishing time is missed WordPress will not publish the blog post on a different time.

For most users, it does not happen very often and for some users it can become a common WordPress issue.

That being said, let's take a look at how to easily fix the missed schedule post error in WordPress.

How to fix The Missed Schedule Post Error in WordPress ?

To begin, you need to install and activate the Scheduled Post Trigger plugin . 

The plugin works out of the box, and there are no settings for you to configure.

The way this plugin works is that each time someone visits your website, it checks to see if WordPress has missed any scheduled publication dates lately. 

If it finds any instances of the missed schedule error, it takes those posts and publishes them right away.

In other words, the plugin works by adding a cron job that checks your website for missed cron jobs. 

This approach might sound a bit redundant, but it works. 

Plus, the plugin doesn't require any special configuration, and will start doing its job automatically once you install and activate it.

How to troubleshoot Missed Scheduled Posts Error in WordPress ?

If installing the plugin does not immediately fix scheduled posts error on your website, then the following are a few tips that you can try.

1. Check Your WordPress Timezone Settings

Setting your timezone is one of the first things to do after installing WordPress. 

However, sometimes users miss it and their WordPress timezone doesn't match the timezone they want to use for publishing and managing their website.

i. Simply go to Settings » General page and scroll down to the 'Timezone' section. 

ii. From here, you need to select your timezone or the timezone you want to use for your WordPress website.

iii. Don't forget to click on the Save Changes button to store your settings.

2. Clear WordPress cache

If your WordPress posts are still missing schedule, then it is likely due to a poorly configured caching plugin. Try clearing WordPress cache and make sure that your WordPress caching plugin is properly configured to automatically clear cache at regular intervals.

3. Increase WordPress memory limit

Your WordPress website may be struggling with low memory limit issue. You can fix that by allowing WordPress to use more server memory which let's WordPress run better.

Simply add the following code to your wp-config.php file before the line that says 'That's all, stop editing! Happy publishing.'

define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '500M');

4. Manage Cron Jobs Directly Through Your Server

If your hosting plan does provide you with access to your server's settings, then you can configure cron jobs to run at that level. 

For this approach to work, however, you'll need to disable WordPress crons first to avoid conflicts.

i. To do that, access your website via FTP using a client such as FileZilla. 

ii. Navigate to your root folder, and look for the wp-config.php file inside:

iii. Right-click on the file, and select the View/Edit option. 

iv. Now, add the following line of code before the end of the file:

define('DISABLE_WP_CRON', true);

v. Save the changes to your wp-config.php file, and that's it for the first step. 

vi. Next, you'll need to implement manual crons through your server, which most providers enable you to do using your hosting control panel.

Also, if you have access to cPanel, there should be an option called Cron Jobs.

By using this tool, you can easily schedule new cron jobs to run on intervals. 

As a rule of thumb, any intervals more frequent than five minutes are overkill, and a cron job running on those times will tax your server unnecessarily.

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