Scheduling Issues

If your scheduled posts aren’t publishing at the expected times, the issue is usually related to the background job system or post status. Here’s how to diagnose and resolve scheduling problems.

Verify the Post Status

1. Go to Posts from the sidebar.
2. Find the scheduled post in question.
3. Check its status:
   • Pending — The post is queued and waiting to be published at its scheduled time. This is the expected state.
   • Published — The post was already published successfully.
   • Failed — The post attempted to publish but encountered an error. See Publishing Failures for details.

If the post shows as Pending but the scheduled time has passed, the job system may need attention.

Check Redis

SoSocial uses Redis and BullMQ for its job queue system. If Redis is not running, scheduled posts cannot be processed.

For self-hosted installations:

• Verify Redis is running and accessible.
• Check the REDIS_URL in your environment configuration.
• Restart Redis if it has stopped.

Check the Publish Worker

The publish worker is the background process that picks up scheduled jobs and publishes them. If it’s not running, posts will accumulate without being published.

For self-hosted installations:

• Check that the server process is running (the worker starts with the server).
• Look at the server logs for any worker startup errors.

Safety Net Cron

SoSocial includes a safety-net cron job that runs every 5 minutes. It scans for any overdue Pending posts that should have been published and re-enqueues them. This catches posts that were missed due to temporary issues like a brief Redis outage or worker restart.

If your post is only a few minutes late, the safety net likely picked it up and published it.

Check Server Logs

The Logs page provides real-time server output that can reveal scheduling issues:

1. Go to Logs from the sidebar.
2. Look for entries related to the publish worker, BullMQ, or your specific post.
3. Error messages here often pinpoint the exact cause — connection failures, queue errors, or platform API issues.

Common Causes

• Redis not running — The job queue depends entirely on Redis. No Redis means no scheduled publishing.
• Server restart during publishing — If the server restarts while a job is processing, the safety net re-enqueues it within 5 minutes.
• Timezone mismatch — Verify your timezone is set correctly in Settings. A wrong timezone means posts publish at the wrong local time even though the system is working correctly.
• Post was edited — When you edit and reschedule a post, old jobs are cleaned up and new ones are created. Check that the rescheduled time is correct.

Still Not Working?

If posts consistently fail to publish on time, create a support ticket from Account > Support with the post ID, scheduled time, and any log entries you’ve found.