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Scheduling

Schedule automatic fetches with WP-Cron in Ingestics.

Setting up a schedule

1. Open a provider in Ingestics
2. Go to the Schedule tab
3. Select an interval (available intervals depend on your edition)
4. Save the provider

Ingestics uses WordPress’s built-in WP-Cron system. No external cron job is required, but you can improve reliability by disabling WP-Cron and setting up a real cron job.

Available intervals by edition

Custom intervals (Pro+)

On the Pro edition and above, you can define custom intervals. For example, you can fetch from a specific provider every 30 minutes while keeping others at 6 hours. This is useful when different APIs have different update frequencies.

Independent API/RSS schedules (Business)

On the Business edition, API and RSS fetches run on independent schedules. This means API fetches do not block RSS fetches, and vice versa. This improves throughput when you have many providers.

Provider rotation

When multiple providers share a schedule slot, Ingestics rotates through them:

• Lite — Combined rotation. API and RSS providers share the same schedule slot.
• Pro — Shared rotation. Providers share schedule slots but with more granular control.
• Business — Full control. Each provider can have its own independent schedule.

Improving WP-Cron reliability

WordPress’s built-in WP-Cron relies on site visitors to trigger scheduled tasks. On low-traffic sites, this can cause delays. To improve reliability:

1. Disable WP-Cron in wp-config.php: define('DISABLE_WP_CRON', true);
2. Set up a real cron job on your server that hits wp-cron.php every minute:

* * * * * wget -q -O - https://yoursite.com/wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron >/dev/null 2>&1

This ensures scheduled fetches run exactly on time, regardless of site traffic.

Rate limiting

Ingestics includes built-in rate limiting to avoid overwhelming external APIs:

• Requests are spaced out with delays between fetches
• On the Business edition, a rate-limit budget queue manages request frequency across all providers
• Exponential backoff is used when APIs return 429 (Too Many Requests) responses

Viewing scheduled tasks

To see when your providers are scheduled to fetch next:

1. Go to Ingestics → Dashboard
2. View the “Next Scheduled Fetch” column for each provider
3. Or open individual providers and check the Schedule tab