Cron comes from an old computer tool named after Chronos, the Greek god of time. Cron helps XenForo plan when to do important jobs by itself. The system puts these jobs on a schedule. You can find all these jobs in the Tools part of your Admin control panel under Cron entries. These jobs help keep your website clean and updated without you needing to do anything. Each job happens at certain times to make sure your forum runs smoothly. Most of these jobs start working when someone visits your website. The system waits for a visitor to load a page, then begins working on its tasks quietly in the background.
Sometimes, you might need your server to start these jobs instead of waiting for visitors. You can change this setting by going to Setup, then Options, then System and performance, and finally, Job run trigger in your Admin control panel. If you pick Server server-based trigger, you must tell your server to run a special command regularly. This command looks like "php cmd.php xf:run-jobs" and needs to run from where XenForo lives on your server. Be careful with this change! Most XenForo websites work fine without changing this setting. If you change it but forget to set up the server properly, your jobs will not happen at all. This can cause problems with your website that you might not expect.
You can make any cron job start right away if you want. Just go to Tools, then Cron entries in your control panel. Look for the job you want to start and click the Run Now button next to it. This makes the job start working immediately instead of waiting for its normal time. Running jobs manually helps when you need something cleaned up or updated right away. The system will still remember the normal schedule for next time. Cron keeps your XenForo site healthy by doing many small tasks automatically. These tasks happen in the background as people use your website, making everything work better for everyone.
Sometimes, you might need your server to start these jobs instead of waiting for visitors. You can change this setting by going to Setup, then Options, then System and performance, and finally, Job run trigger in your Admin control panel. If you pick Server server-based trigger, you must tell your server to run a special command regularly. This command looks like "php cmd.php xf:run-jobs" and needs to run from where XenForo lives on your server. Be careful with this change! Most XenForo websites work fine without changing this setting. If you change it but forget to set up the server properly, your jobs will not happen at all. This can cause problems with your website that you might not expect.
You can make any cron job start right away if you want. Just go to Tools, then Cron entries in your control panel. Look for the job you want to start and click the Run Now button next to it. This makes the job start working immediately instead of waiting for its normal time. Running jobs manually helps when you need something cleaned up or updated right away. The system will still remember the normal schedule for next time. Cron keeps your XenForo site healthy by doing many small tasks automatically. These tasks happen in the background as people use your website, making everything work better for everyone.
