WP-cron not working?

by Joost de Valk on 19 February, 2009 at 13:36 23 comments

So when I moved to the (DV) server at MediaTemple, it turns out that my WP-Cron stopped working. I didn't notice for a while, until I found out that the new version of Tweetbacks didn't work for me anymore, and this was using wp-cron.

The fix turned out to be very simple, after some debugging with the help of Donncha: in my /etc/hosts file, 127.0.0.1 pointed not only to localhost, but also to yoast.com, and when you opened 127.0.0.1, you didn't get yoast.com. So I removed yoast.com from that line, and restarted apache, and tadaa! wp-cron started working again.

This might also cause issues for other people, which is why I post about it. It might, for instance, explain why people are having issues with the WP-Super-Cache garbage collection not working.

Let me know in the comments if this helps you, or whether you had to do other things to get it working!

Update: I ended up switching hosts over issues like this one. I'm now on WestHost, and all seems to be good. More info on my WordPress hosting experiences here.

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Tags: WordPress Plugins
Category: WordPress
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23 Responses to “WP-cron not working?”

by Chung Bey Luen on 19 February, 2009 at 14:49

I have a related post on WordPress missed schedule on my blog.

by Peter on 19 February, 2009 at 15:49

Just know that by removing yoast.com from the /etc/hosts could in theory disrupt other services that depend on name resolving and ip security.
Accessing your MySQL for example. MySQL could do name resolving and block your external IP (I assume yoast.com resolves to an external IP right now) access to the tables.

What did you get when opened 127.0.0.1 in Apache?

by Paw on 19 February, 2009 at 16:18

Amazing blog you have here on yoast.com, i like your writing style! I have addet your feed to my rss reader.. I will look forward to the next post.

Paw

by Dave Ward on 19 February, 2009 at 17:03

Watch out, because that /etc/hosts line gets regenerated every time your (dv) restarts. There's a thread about it on the (mt) forums (in the (dv) section).

by brad hart on 19 February, 2009 at 21:04

I noticed this had quit working too. I wouldn't even no where to start editing the file you mention so thanks for mentioning this. I have reverted to the pre-cron version which worked just fine for me, I think you will have a lot of people people in this same boat. Other than this upgrade change this has been a fabulous plugin so safe.

by Donncha O Caoimh on 20 February, 2009 at 23:01

It reverts the hosts file? Ouch, that's bad!

Brad - you should try to get this working because other WordPress functions and plugins won't work properly either. WP Super Cache uses wp-cron to delete it's expired files automatically, and WordPress scheduled posts relies on it too.

by Henri on 21 February, 2009 at 19:14

127.0.0.1 pointed to only pointed to localhost is very, very strange. How is it possible?

by Steen Öhman on 22 February, 2009 at 11:12

Thanks for the tip.

Had a client with the same problem ... now solved!

Great site you have here ... I will back - as they say in California.

Pingback: WP Super Cache 0.9.1

Pingback: WordPress hosting done right - Yoast - Tweaking Websites

by Malice on 14 March, 2009 at 17:33

That pretty much explains why at times my wordpress didnt publish scheduled posts. :D

by 5ubliminal on 21 March, 2009 at 13:46

Try my plugin: http://blog.5ubliminal.com/48 . And ... it works ;)

by qdinar on 11 April, 2009 at 13:50

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-super-cache/faq/ :

Check your access_logs for wp-cron.php entries. Do they return a 404 (file not found) or 200 code? If it's 404 or you don't see wp-cron.php anywhere WordPress may be looking for that script in the wrong place.
i have wpmu main domain linked to 127.0.0.1 and wp-cron.php returns "200", i see in log file. so i think it works.
i do not know why it may not work.