WP-Cron Control Plugin

This plugin allows you to take control over the execution of cron jobs. It’s mainly useful for sites that either don’t get enough comments to ensure a frequent execution of wp-cron or for sites where the execution of cron via regular methods can cause race conditions resulting in multiple execution of wp-cron at the same time. It can also help when you run into posts that missed their schedule.

This plugin implements a secret parameter and ensures that cron jobs are only executed when this parameter is existing.

Limitations

This plugin performs a remove_action( 'sanitize_comment_cookies', 'wp_cron' ); call in order to disable the spawning of new cron processes via the regular WordPress method. If wp_cron is hooked in an other action or called directly this might cause trouble.

• Install either via the WordPress.org plugin directory, or by uploading the files to your server.
• Activate the Plugin and ensure that you enable the feature in the plugins’ settings screen
• Follow the instructions on the plugins’ settings screen in order to set up a cron job that either calls php wp-cron-control.php http://blog.address secret_string or wget -q "http://blog.address/wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron&secret_string"
• If you like to have a global secret string you can define it in your wp-config.php by adding define( 'WP_CRON_CONTROL_SECRET', my_secret_string' );

1. 

   Settings screen to enable/disable various features.

Installation Instructions

• Install either via the WordPress.org plugin directory, or by uploading the files to your server.
• Activate the Plugin and ensure that you enable the feature in the plugins’ settings screen
• Follow the instructions on the plugins’ settings screen in order to set up a cron job that either calls php wp-cron-control.php http://blog.address secret_string or wget -q "http://blog.address/wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron&secret_string"
• If you like to have a global secret string you can define it in your wp-config.php by adding define( 'WP_CRON_CONTROL_SECRET', my_secret_string' );

Version 0.7.1

• Security hardening (better escaping, sanitization of saved values)
• Update plugin to use core’s updated cron hook

Version 0.7

• Remove unneeded use of $wpdb->prepare() that triggered PHP warnings because a second argument wasn’t provided.
• Update interface text to be translatable.

Version 0.6

• Make sure that validated wp-cron-control requests also are valid in wp-cron.php by setting the global $doing_wp_cron value

Version 0.5

• Adjustments for improved cron locking introduced in WordPress 3.3 https://core.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/18659

Version 0.4

• Implementing feedback from Yoast http://yoast.com/wp-plugin-review/wp-cron-control/, fixing button classes, more inline comments

Version 0.3

• Added option to enable extra check that would search for missing jobs for scheduled posts and add them if necessary.

Version 0.2

• Added capability check in settings page

Version 0.1

• Initial version of this plugin.