How do I set WordPress plugins to do cron jobs?

Question

We are looking for an autoblogging WordPress plugin for Atom/Rss feeds (must support Atom). The problem is, I tried 4 autoblogging plugins, but none of them run its cron jobs on time. I want the plugin to update every hour, or at least 4 times a day. I tried but I don't understand how WordPress does cron jobs. I set the plugins to update every 60 minutes, but none of them does. When the time has passed, they just write that the time has passed but they don't update the feeds.

Here are the names of the plugins I tried:

1. AutoBlogged Version 2.9.1
2. FeedWordPress Version 2011.1019
3. WPeMatico Version 0.91.1Beta
4. CyberSyn Version 2.11

Do you know other plugin for autoblogging from Atom feeds or do you know how to fix this problem?

Thanks! Uri.

Answer 1

The wordpress cron jobs are only fired(called) when a user visits the website, so if your site dosnt have a lot of traffic then the crons wont fire on time, your better to create a php page which has a call to each of the functions you want to fire,

then using your hosting control panel, check to see if you have access cron jobs,

then simply create a cron job set the time interval and point it to the php page you wish to call at that time,

Then when the time comes for the cron job to run, it locates the php file and runs it,

but again this depends on your hosting options, have a look here, if you use:

Cpanel: http://www.upstartblogger.com/how-to-create-a-cron-job-in-cpanel

Plesk: http://myhosting.com/kb/How_to_Set_Up_Cron_Jobs_in_Plesk_9.5

GoDaddy: http://support.godaddy.com/help/article/3547/creating-a-basic-cron-job

Marty