External Cron

WP-Cron fires only when someone visits the site — on low-traffic or idle sites, queued webhooks can sit unprocessed for hours. External Cron replaces this with a managed external worker (powered by Uptime Kuma) that pings your site on a fixed schedule, independently of visitor traffic. The worker is created and maintained automatically through the plugin; there is nothing to configure on your server and no external dashboard to log in to.

Plugin queue endpoint (min 20 s interval)

Pings the plugin's own REST endpoint — /wp-json/fswa/v1/cron/process?token=… — which processes only the webhook delivery queue. Because it does minimal work it can fire as often as every 20 seconds. You also control the batch size (1–100 jobs per run, default 10) to tune throughput without overloading the server.

WP-Cron endpoint (min 60 s interval)

Pings /wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron, running the full WordPress scheduler — all registered cron events including the webhook queue. Choose this if you want one external pinger to cover all WordPress background work. Switching to this mode automatically writes DISABLE_WP_CRON to wp-config.php so WordPress stops spawning its own background requests; switching back removes it.

Fully managed — zero server setup

On Pro license activation an external worker is provisioned automatically and starts pinging immediately. The target URL updates itself if you regenerate the cron token or change the mode. The worker is paused automatically when the license is deactivated and resumed when it is reactivated. No crontab, no server access, no external accounts — everything is controlled from the plugin settings.

Live heartbeat history in wp-admin

The External Cron tab shows a heartbeat chart with 24 h uptime and average response time. If the last ping failed, the error message is surfaced directly in wp-admin. You can pause and resume the worker from the same screen — no external service dashboard required.

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