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Choosing Between Real Cron and AJAX Cron in Evolution CMS
When to use real cron and when an AJAX-triggered pseudo-cron approach is acceptable in Evolution CMS.
As soon as a project needs periodic work such as mail queues, feed refreshes, exports, or cleanup jobs, somebody asks the same question: do we need real cron, or can we fake it through frontend traffic?
The practical answer is that real cron is still the better choice whenever consistency matters. AJAX cron or traffic-triggered pseudo-cron can work for lightweight tasks, but it depends on visits, can fire at unpredictable moments, and is awkward for heavier workloads.
That does not make AJAX cron useless. On cheap hosting or constrained projects, it can be a pragmatic fallback for non-critical jobs. But it should be treated as a compromise, not as the default architecture.
In Evolution CMS terms, the right decision comes down to reliability. If the task must happen on schedule, use real cron. If the task only needs “eventually” and the environment gives you nothing better, a pseudo-cron pattern may be acceptable.
Generating sitemap.xml for Large Evolution CMS Sites Without Timing Out
What to do when sitemap generation times out on a large Evolution CMS site with tens of thousands of resources.
Fixing Ditto Date Output That Falls Back to `-1` in Evolution CMS
Why Ditto can output -1 for dates and how to point the listing at the correct date source field.