Cron Expression Builder

A cron expression is a string of five fields separated by spaces: minute, hour, day of month, month, and day of week. Each field accepts a number, a range (1-5), a list (1,3,5), a step (*/15 means every 15), or an asterisk (every value). The expression 30 2 * * 1 means "at 2:30 AM every Monday." Cron jobs run in the server's timezone — if your server is in UTC but your users expect Eastern time, you need to offset accordingly.

WordPress has its own scheduling system called WP-Cron, which does not use the server's cron daemon. Instead, it checks for scheduled tasks on every page load. This means if no one visits your site, scheduled tasks like publishing future posts or sending email digests will not fire on time. For reliable scheduling, disable WP-Cron (define('DISABLE_WP_CRON', true); in wp-config.php) and set up a real server cron job that hits wp-cron.php at a regular interval — every 5 or 15 minutes is typical.