Like a Leech

  • traqbar

    (@traqbar)


    5 months ago

    Only tested it, I didnt like it, and now it wont leave. Manually removing tables – crashes my site. Sucking the life out of my server. I have to ask support for how to get rid of it.

    Horrible Horrible

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • Thread Starter traqbar

    (@traqbar)

    5 months ago

    Be very careful about installing this – it is more of a library for developers than something for a general functional use.

    Plugin Support Sean O))) a11n

    (@seanomattic)

    4 months, 3 weeks ago

    Hi @traqbar,

    Sorry to hear about your experience! Just to confirm, you installed the Action Scheduler plugin, and are now unable to remove it?

    What happens when you disable it from your plugins folder: Dashboard > Plugins?

    If you’re seeing any error messages, please send a screenshot.

    Thanks!

    Thread Starter traqbar

    (@traqbar)

    4 months, 3 weeks ago

    Hi,

    No the main issue is that the whole concept of this library is backward. It should be an optional usage for any website owner and not self installed by any random plugin that uses the library.

    Only if this plugin is installed should and other plugin connect with it – on the users optional descision. The majority of wordpress sites are unlikely to require such a managed cronjob system, yet you are introducing an additional level of complexity to a few plugins that might use it. Whilst the rest might not – so not resloving the problem on a site that scales enough to require such level of management.

    Your documentation shows that any real need for it requires further plugins to manage different setups. As all said and done, the only plugins that are using it on my site are already overbloated nonsense and I aim to remove them – which at the same time I will remove these tables.

    I resolved the issue by going through each of my sites and actvating and deactivating this plugin to ensure the tables are built and my site runs okay again. Until such a time when I will remove all this nonsense.

    Thanks

    Plugin Support Sean O))) a11n

    (@seanomattic)

    4 months, 3 weeks ago

    Hey @traqbar,

    I’m curious if you installed Action Scheduler for any particular purpose. It’s not required on every site and does have some specific uses.

    It’s used by folks in the WordPress Community to process payments for Subscriptions, webhooks for WooCommerce, as well as events and emails for a range of plugins. It’s good for batch processing.

    AS sends in batches of 20 so it doesn’t exhaust PHP memory, it can process more than one batch at a time, and it can process a max of 5 queues at a time.

    Action Scheduler uses a WordPress custom post type, named scheduled-action, to store the hook name, arguments and scheduled date for an action that should be triggered at some time in the future. It will then attempt to run every minute by attaching itself as a callback to the ‘action_scheduler_run_schedule’ hook, which is scheduled using WordPress’s built-in WP-Cron system.

    WP Cron triggers Action Scheduler. When triggered, Action Scheduler will check for posts of the scheduled-action type that have a post_date at or before this point in time.

    I hope this information is helpful!

    Thread Starter traqbar

    (@traqbar)

    4 months, 3 weeks ago

    Hello,

    Yes, I got the jist of the intention for this system. Sadly I learnt about it through working out what had crashed my site. It was installed by another plugin which created the tables. I was cleaning out the database no-longer needed tables, and these tables I assumed to be with a cron check plugin I had used intentionally.

    As these tables are not obviously associated to a plugin which is using it through any naming scheme I naturally had no issues with removing such tables. Then random and weird crashes that made no sense. Then researching into the casues of the script in one plugin traced all the way back to here. Hence a lot of time and frustration for something I never asked for to be permanently installed on my site. There is no normal way to remove these tables except manually, but there is the danger, unless you know exactly nothing is using it your site will crash.

    Hence I understand what benefit you are trying to achieve, but it is very often not required in most cases, and only really required by people who know what they are doing, by which point they will be looking for some kind of cron management system. Which is why I say this is a backward method of forcing upon people who really do not need it – and not allowing it to be an optional use case by people who know what they are doing.

    Plugin Author Barry

    (@barryhughes-1)

    1 month ago

    I realize these comments were written a few months back, but I wanted to address a couple of points in case useful for others.

    Which is why I say this is a backward method of forcing upon people who really do not need it – and not allowing it to be an optional use case by people who know what they are doing.

    From our perspective, we don’t force Action Scheduler on anybody. Generally speaking, we don’t even recommend it be installed directly. Instead, individual plugins choose to bundle it with their code, just as they would do for any other library that they find useful.

    Making its use optional, is therefore something that needs to be implemented by the plugins that use it (there is no way for Action Scheduler to do this unilaterally, without causing significant problems).

    Hence I understand what benefit you are trying to achieve, but it is very often not required in most cases

    I mean, perhaps? We can only assume that the plugin authors who decide to use it do so for reasons that make sense in the context of their project. Otherwise, they would not use it.

    Our team also works on WooCommerce, and Action Scheduler is bundled within that plugin. In our case, it’s a deliberate decision: WP’s native scheduled event system does not offer everything we need.

    As these tables are not obviously associated to a plugin which is using it through any naming scheme I naturally had no issues with removing such tables.

    Deleting database tables needed by an application is always going to be risky so, regardless of whether we’re talking about tables created by Action Scheduler or by some other plugin, I’d caution against doing this directly on a live/production site.

    Action Scheduler’s tables are not obviously associated with any other plugin because it is designed to be used by multiple plugins all at once: it’s not uncommon for several plugins to all include and depend on Action Scheduler, but that does not mean each of those plugins should have its own set of scheduled action tables.

    • This reply was modified 1 month ago by Barry. Reason: Small tweaks
Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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