hooking WP Cron into the System Task Scheduler

plugin-developer-learning-pathway/12-Cron/04-Hooking-WP-Cron-Into-The-System-Task-Schedule.md

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+# Hooking WP Cron into the System Task Scheduler
+
+As mentioned previous event, if using native WP Cron is easier as it works out of the box, it is not the best option you have for critical tasks.
+
+For this reason, it is important to use the System Task Scheduler of your operating system to make sure jobs are executed on time.
+
+## Enable the System Task Scheduler
+
+Depending on your operating system, you will have a different configuration.
+
+### Windows
+Windows calls their time based scheduling system the Task Scheduler. It can be accessed via the Administrative Tools in the control panel.
+
+How you setup the task varies with server setup. One method is to use PowerShell and a Basic Task. After creating a Basic Task the following command can be used to call the WordPress Cron script.
+
+```
+powershell "Invoke-WebRequest http://YOUR_SITE_URL/wp-cron.php"
+```
+
+### MacOS and Linux
+
+Mac OS X and Linux both use cron as their time based scheduling system. It is typically access from the terminal with the crontab -e command. It should be noted that tasks will be run as a regular user or as root depending on the system user running the command.
+
+Cron has a specific syntax that needs to be followed and contains the following parts:
+
+Minute
+
+Hour
+
+Day of month
+
+Month
+
+Day of week
+
+Command to execute
+
+![Cron scheduling](_imgs/plugin-wp-cron-cron-scheduling.webp)
+
+If a command should be run regardless of one of the time sections an asterisk (*) should be used. For example if you wanted to run a command every 15 minutes regardless of the hour, day, or month it would look like:
+
+```
+*/15 * * * * command
+```
+Many servers have wget installed and this is an easy tool to call the WordPress Cron script.
+
+```
+wget --delete-after http://YOUR_SITE_URL/wp-cron.php
+```
+
+## Disable the vanilla WP-Cron
+
+Once the system task scheduler is active on our website, it is now time to remove the existing mechanism from WordPress.
+
+For that we need to go into the website `wp-config.php` file and add the following constant:
+
+```php
+define('DISABLE_WP_CRON', true);
+```
+
+Once this is done, we are now relying on the system task scheduler to run our WordPress website.
+