I am using a plugin to send emails to a relatively large email list. Because we have a low per-hour email threshold from our host we have to use a setting in the plugin to throttle the emails down to only a certain number every hour. I am assuming that the plugin uses wp-cron to accomplish this. I have tried finding documentation on wp-cron but the only substantial information I have been able to find is that it requires a page view to run.
Questions:
- Is an RSS feed being pinged enough to trigger a “page view” and therefore wp-cron?
- How long after a page view will wp-cron run? (e.g. if last page view is at 6:59p.m. will cron scheduled for 7pm run?)
- What happens if a cron job is missed?(No one visits website all day until 7:03 p.m. Is 7p.m. cron job run?)
Yes.
No, because the scheduled job hasn’t reached the time yet.
Yes, but not until 7:03pm.
Basically, any hit to the site after the scheduled time will cause the queued job to run. The WP_Cron is a “best effort” system, not an exact timer. This is generally good enough though, since if nobody’s visiting the site, then it doesn’t need to run and do anything for the most part.