Managing cronjobs in Cloudways

Cloudways comes with an easy tool to create basic cronjobs, but what if we want to run more advanced cronjobs? Or, execute WordPress cronjobs via wp-cli?

Let’s dive into the setup on Cloudways!

Managing your application

Go to your application settings, and click on Cron Job Management.

You’ll see two tabs: Basic and Advanced, select the advanced tab.

You can now enter manual cronjobs.

The one I entered (the text below is a bit different from the screenshot) is:

*/10 * * * * /usr/local/bin/wp cron event run --due-now --path=/home/master/applications/{application_id}/public_html/ >> /home/master/logs/cron.log  2>&1

This translated to: Run the wp-cli comment “cron event run” every 10 minutes for this application and log the output to ~/logs/cron.log. (make sure to create this file first)

How to disable WordPress’ native cronjobs that execute on page load?

Add this to your wp-config.php file: define('DISABLE_WP_CRON', true);

How to time these cronjobs?

Honestly – every time I create a cronjob, I get my configuration from: https://crontab.guru/examples.html
This beautiful tool makes cronjobs so much easier!

Where does /usr/local/bin/wp come from?

/usr/local/bin/wp is where the wp-cli tool lives, you can find that path by entering which wp in your terminal when connected via SSH.

Where do I find my application ID?

Your application ID is the same as your application username. You’ll find it in Access Details.

How do I create the cron.log file?

Connect to your server using SSH, and then run:

touch ~/logs/cron.log