The Illusion of a Schedule: Why WP-Cron Isn’t a Real Cron Job

22 Sep 2026· Originally published on 4wp.dev ·WordPress Hooks

In short

  • WP-Cron fires from visitors, not as a real background process.
  • A small site, a high-traffic site and an enterprise site each hit cron differently, so the fix differs too.
  • Control points: `cron_schedules`, `cron_request`, `wp_scheduled_delete`.
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