Properties stopped updating: Troubleshooting WordPress Cron

If you have a site where the properties were updating from your feeds that suddenly stops working the problem is most likely to do with plugin or theme causing the WordPress scheduler to stall. Unfortunately any plugin has a schedule running that goes into error it will stop all the other schedules from running also. This might be as a result of adding a new plugin or an errant plugin update and can unfortunately be very hard to pinpoint. The first you you should do is make sure that all plugins are up to date as getting the latest versions may well fix any errors that were present in the plugins. If that fails the official advise from WordPress is to disabled plugins until the schedules start to run again which is not all that helpful on a live site!!

We suggest that you install a WordPress plugin called Crontrol (just go to wp-admin > plugins and search and add it in from there). This plugin will show you a list of Cron Events where you can see all the schedules that are due to run, when they last ran and when they are new due. If you have a long list of schedules due to run “now” then you more than likely have an errant schedule in the list. The most likely culprit is the one that is at the top of the list! The schedule name will normally reveal which plugin it belongs to so disable that plugin and then give the scheduler 5 mins to run and see if the schedules are now running. You can trigger the schedule straight away by going to http://www.yoursitedomain.com/wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron if you can’t wait (this doesn’t always work because WordPress puts a time limit on the use of this direct url). Once you see that the cron events are working again you will know what was preventing it and can let the plugin developer know.