Support

July 11, 2022 at 4:52 am

Hi there,

How long has the reserved seat been in reserve for?

Can you add a screenshot of your Ticket and Datetime section for the event?

Are you using Waitlist add-on?

Have you checked to confirm WP_CRON is enabled on the site?

July 13, 2022 at 8:29 am

How long has the reserved seat been in reserve for?

I think you missed the reply to this one 🙂

Can you add a screenshot of your Ticket and Datetime section for the event? I have a screen shot, but where do I upload for you?

Host the image and then post a link to it, you can do it through the sites media uploader (Dashboard -> Media) or using a 3rd party service:

https://eventespresso.com/wiki/troubleshooting-checklist/#screenshots

Are you using Waitlist add-on? not that I am aware of?

I’ve just checked on your site and you don’t have that add-on active, so no 🙂

Have you checked to confirm WP_CRON is enabled on the site? Where would I check that? I am a very small business owner I do everything!

The way I would do this is to install this plugin on the site:

https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/wp-crontrol/

Then go to Tools -> Cron events.

Do you see any notices at the top of that page above WP_CRON?

July 13, 2022 at 2:52 pm

Hi there!

Thanks for getting back to us.

The WP Cron is crucial to this feature since it schedules a task that will remove the ticket not purchased after 1 hour (that is our default). You can find more details about it here: https://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/how-to-view-and-control-wordpress-cron-jobs/

I hope you can check if it’s working!

July 18, 2022 at 3:47 am

So you now have WP Crontrol installed and activate?

Go to Tools -> Cron events.

Do you see any notices at the top of that page above WP_CRON?

July 18, 2022 at 10:03 am

Ok, so the 3rd notice on that screenshot is:

“The DISABLE_WP_CRON consent is set to true. WP-Cron spawning is disabled.”

So someone has disabled WP_CRON on your site/server, usually, when they do this they set up a ‘real’ server-side cron job to do the same thing as what WordPress does (but more efficiently). However, on your site, it’s listing cron jobs that haven’t run for weeks, so the above hasn’t been done.

Can I take a quick look in the admin? I’d like to check the cron jobs before advising your further as you may have a good few waiting which will then trigger all kinds of jobs on your site once WP_CRON has been fixed.

If that’s ok, please send temp login credentials using this form:

https://eventespresso.com/send-login-details/

July 22, 2022 at 5:34 am

Hi there,

My apologies for the delayed reply.

I just wanted you to know, that no one has disabled or set up anything different. As I just uploaded WP_Cron upon your suggestion to look for it under tools.

‘Someone’ has set up the server to disable WP_CRON, most likely your host.

The plugin I asked you to install just shows your WP_CRON events set up within WordPress and will display a notice if WP_CRON has been disabled on the site, the way it gets disabled is by adding some code to your site’s wp-config.php file (you can’t change it within the admin itself).

This change was made about a month ago as you have cron jobs sitting from just over a months time.

Which hosting company do you host the site with? I’d start by creating a ticket with them and asking if they have disabled WP_CRON on your site, someone had to have set that constant within the wp-config.php file and if you’ve not been working with a developer who may have done it (I assume not by your earlier responses) then it may have been your host.

You have about 40 cron jobs related to registrations over the past month from Event Espresso sitting waiting which may trigger emails to the users who created the registrations when WP_CRON is fixed, do you want me to remove those for you or leave them as is?

July 22, 2022 at 9:40 am

I think it might help you if I explain a little above WP-Cron here.

WP-CRON is a feature built into WordPress itself and to explain a little, its a sort of ‘sudo’ (aka fake) job schedule.

It allows plugins, themes, etc to set a ‘scheduled’ task to run later than now… we use it for lots of things but to give a quick example, WordPress has its own tasks scheduled to check for updates on the site twice a day.

It is a ‘sudo’ schedule because it can’t actually set up a task to run at a specific time, it sets up a task and says run ‘twice daily’ but the task can only run if a visitor hits the site to trigger a cp-cron check (the tasks stores the time it was last run and compares that time to ‘now’ when wp-cron is triggered). This is where it gets a little… tricky, for wp-cron to work EVERY single time someone visits your site (including you, the admin) in the background WordPress says:

‘Any tasks scheduled to run right now? Nope, ok!’

next request

‘Any tasks scheduled to run right now? Nope, ok!’

next request

‘Any tasks scheduled to run right now? Oh hey I should check for updates, and run this other task for EE to release seats etc etc’

So it’s running that check every time any page is visited on the site, that’s normal, it’s how WP-CRON works.

Hosts prefer that isn’t the case. It’s (slightly) more processing on every single request and they want to reduce that if possible… fewer resources required per site means more sites can run on the same server.

So what they often do is disable WP-CRON by adding a line of code into your sites wp-config.php file:

define('DISABLE_WP_CRON', true);

And they SHOULD set up a ‘real’ cron job on the server, one that will actually run every X mins or whatever to check if there are scheduled WP Cron taks. Still fewer resources are needed because it doesn’t happen on every request but WP-CRON still works, it’s just only called every X mins now not all the time (which is fine for 99% of users).

It looks like your server doesn’t have that cron set up or there is an issue with it.

—-

The plugin I gave you is just listing the WP-Cron tasks set up within WordPress, it doesn’t ‘do’ anything as is but just shows you what has been set up on your site. So roughly a month ago, WP-CRON was disabled and the scheduled tasks are still sitting waiting to run within WordPress, that’s what that plugin is showing you 🙂

August 2, 2022 at 8:21 am

Would it be better on if I host on C Panel? I can do that at no additional charge.

Possibly yes, I’m not overly familiar with GoDaddy’s hosting packages as I don’t use them.

I just went in again, and now it seems to be active. Does everything look right now?

The cron jobs appear to have run, so ‘maybe’.

WP_CRON is still disabled but a real cron may have now been set up on the server. I’ll check this again in 24 hours to see if the crons are running.