Support

September 9, 2021 at 8:59 am

Hi Simon,

Event Espresso default value for both the generation and sending steps in the queue is 5 minutes although the messages need to go through both steps so can take 10 mins to generate and send.

However, the message queue also relies on WP_CRON to function, meaning we schedule the tasks to be 5 minutes but that relies on a page being hit on your site to trigger a WP_CRON check.

You can read details on how WP_CRON functions here:

https://developer.wordpress.org/plugins/cron/

In short WordPress checks on every page load if WP_CRON has any scheduled takes that are due, so when we say ‘run every 5 mins’ is schedules the takes to run and WP checks each page load if a task has been set to run (it checks the ‘last run’ time of the task and compares to the schedule).

You said the crons seem to be running as expected, so may I ask how you are checking that? If you’ve disabled WP_CRON and added a ‘real’ cron on the server (which some hosts do to reduce load) then whatever the schedule is set for that cron it will take 2x that value for the message to send (as there’s 2 steps in the queue).

The issue could also be outside of Event Espresso and be an issue with the mail server, we have seen it previously where the mail server in use was taking roughly 4 hours to work through the queue to send emails after they had been added.

We do have an option within Event Espresso to stop using WP_CRON and just send the messages immediately, however, note that part of the reason we added the message queue system was due to users having issues with their mail server then causing registrations to fail so you’ll need to monitor and confirm emails are functioning to keep registrations working.

You can switch to send messages immediately using the option:

Event Espresso -> Messages -> Settings.

Set the ‘Generate and send all messages’ option to ‘On the same request’.

Do emails send instantly for you then?