A module called Cron performs automated actions such as:
- Indexing new content for sitewide searching
- Sending email reminders for Event registration
- (and more)
Q: I scheduled an action, and it got done AFTER the date & time I specified for it. Why?
A: It is helpful to be aware of some quirks in the way Cron behaves to understand why automated actions happen how and when they do.
- In general, Cron is scheduled to run every 3 hours.
- However, Cron doesn't run if no visitors are hitting the site.
- When Cron does run, if there are tasks awaiting action (i.e. the date & time is past), it does the scheduled actions.
Running Cron frequently can slow down site performance, so it is better to schedule actions with affordances for the Cron cycle, not change the Cron schedule to run more frequently.
You can monitor what Cron is doing on your site by going to Reports > Recent log messages and filtering log messages to only show "cron" type messages.