Fix the WordPress Missed Schedule Error

Scheduling your website’s blog posts ahead of time is a fool-proof way to never miss a deadline. But, sometimes WordPress misses the mark and your forethought is for not.  To make matters worse, WordPress won’t actively notify you it messed up.  Instead, it just won’t publish it and give you the “Missed Schedule Error.”

This can happen for a number of reasons, although the most common reason is due to a failed WordPress cron job.

Explained in detail by Tom McFarlin, WordPress cron jobs are what he deems “faux cron jobs.” When a typical cron job is set up, the server will execute the job at the required interval, regardless.  It’s set & forget.

With WordPress cron jobs however, things work a little differently. When a WordPress cron job is set, it is scheduled and saved to the database. Then, when a user arrives on the website, WordPress scans the system checking for any scheduled tasks and executes them if it finds them.

Notice the issue?

If no one visits your website around the the time a scheduled post is set to publish, your post will not execute as planned and you will find a “Missed Schedule” error the next time you log into your WordPress dashboard and view all posts.

For those of you that have well trafficked websites this may never pose as a problem. However, if you’re a domestic public company, for example, where regular press releases MUST be published at odd hours, like 4am, then it’s possible the post won’t be published according to your schedule.

To make matters worse, if you’re using RSS-to-Email to generate investor notification emails from your WordPress RSS feed, investors won’t see the email before the earnings call.  Yikes!

Don’t worry.  As with most edge-case issues with WordPress, “there’s a plugin for that.”

Prevent the “Missed Schedule” Error with a Plugin

The easiest way to fix the missed schedule error in WordPress is to use a light-weight plugin called Missed Schedule Post Publisher.  The plugin is no-nonsense and does a simple job very well.  As the plugin author writes,

Checks to see if any scheduled posts have been missed. If so, it publishes them. Choose run time and forget it.

Setup & Configuration

1. Go to Plugins >> Add New
2. Search for Missed Schedule Post Publisher
3. Install and Activate the Plugin
4. Click on Missed Schedule on the left-hand of your admin
5. Set the check interval, every 20 minutes is recommended by the plugin
6. Click the Update button

Once that’s done, even if nobody visits your website right around the time that scheduled post is supposed to publish, this plugin will check every, say, 20 minutes, and if it finds one that’s been missed, it’ll publish it for you immediately.

Now, at worst, the publish day/time will never be completely missed, it just might be 20 minutes late–max.