logo

Extra Block Types (EBT) - New Layout Builder experience❗

Extra Block Types (EBT) - styled, customizable block types: Slideshows, Tabs, Cards, Accordions and many others. Built-in settings for background, DOM Box, javascript plugins. Experience the future of layout building today.

Demo EBT modules Download EBT modules

❗Extra Paragraph Types (EPT) - New Paragraphs experience

Extra Paragraph Types (EPT) - analogical paragraph based set of modules.

Demo EPT modules Download EPT modules

GLightbox is a pure javascript lightbox (Colorbox alternative without jQuery)❗

It can display images, iframes, inline content and videos with optional autoplay for YouTube, Vimeo and even self-hosted videos.

Demo GLightbox Download GLightbox

Scroll
  1. Home
  2. Drupal Documentation
  3. Drupal Site Administration
  4. Cron automated tasks

Automated Cron

15/04/2025, by Ivan

Menu

Drupal 8 provides the Automated Cron module.

We can find this core module in core/modules/automatic_cron.

Compared to Drupal 7

Drupal 7 already had an "automated cron system," but Drupal 8 moved it into a separate module so that sites not using it wouldn’t incur any overhead.

Compared to Manual Cron

The drawback of the automated cron module is that it is triggered by a request, and an unlucky user making that request may experience a noticeable delay. For this reason, automated cron is typically used on smaller sites that cannot set up manual cron jobs using tools like Linux crontab. If crontab is needed, the Drupal console command can simplify the configuration (instead of relying on the long URL shown in /admin/config/system/cron). Here's an example of a crontab entry:

30 * * * * web_user /var/www/html/vendor/bin/drupal --root=/var/www/html/docroot cron:execute > /dev/null 2>&1

This will run Drupal cron once every hour at 30 minutes past the hour.