MainWP Bulk Publishing Timeout & Cron Error (schedule_event_false)

Hello MainWP Support Team,

I am experiencing a critical issue that started on Feb 11, 2026.

When using MainWP to publish one article to multiple connected sites (bulk publishing), the request keeps loading for more than one minute and then fails with an error. This was working perfectly before, and no major changes were made before the issue began.

My hosting provider (Bluehost Cloud) checked the server and confirmed there is no high CPU usage or heavy load. However, they found the following PHP errors related to MainWP:

Cron reschedule event error for hook: mainwp_maintenance_cron_scheduled_continue
Error code: schedule_event_false
Error message: A plugin disallowed this event.
Schedule: minutely (interval 60)

Also:
PHP Warning: Undefined variable $el_id_ind_set_chk_2
File: /wp-content/plugins/mainwp/modules/api-backups/classes/class-api-backups-settings.php
Lines: 1179 & 1181

The issue affects multiple MainWP dashboards (more than 7 installations), not just one site.

Could this cron scheduling error or the API Backups module warning cause bulk publishing timeouts?
Please advise on troubleshooting steps or whether this is a known issue.

Thank you

Hey @ajay_newszy

That cron scheduling error or the API Backups module warning shouldn’t be affecting this.

1/
To how many child sites are you trying to publish an article?

2/
Does the article have images, either embedded or a featured image?

If so, can you try publishing a simple text-only article and see if that works?

3/
And can you please post the community system report from your MainWP Dashboard for review? The report is located in your Dashboard under Info → Server (your-mainwp-dashboard.com/wp-admin/admin.php?page=ServerInformation), on the top right of the page.

Be sure to use the button like the one below; this button hides all your private information:

image

Pressing the button auto-copies the report to your clipboard then just paste it in a reply here.

Hello,

Thank you for your response.

1/
Normally, I publish to around 50 child sites in one batch , and this has been working perfectly for a long time without any issues. I was able to publish to 50 sites simultaneously without timeouts or failures.

However, about 2–3 days ago, this issue suddenly started. I did not change anything in my publishing workflow, plugins, or server settings before it began.

2/
Yes, each article includes one image , and the same image is also set as the featured image. This has always been my normal publishing method, and nothing has changed in this regard.

Important note:
The article actually gets published successfully to all 50 sites. However, after publishing, the MainWP dashboard keeps loading for a long time and then fails to display the success confirmation message.

So the publishing completes, but the process does not return properly in the dashboard interface.

I will share the community system report in my next reply.


### WordPress Check                Required                                               Detected                                     Status   ###

FileSystem Method                  = direct                                               direct                                       Pass        
MultiSite Disabled                 =true                                                  true                                         Pass        
WordPress Memory Limit             >=64M                                                  512M                                         Pass        
WordPress Version                  >=6.2                                                  6.9.1                                        Pass        

### PHP                            Required                                               Detected                                     Status   ###

cURL Extension Enabled             =true                                                  true                                         Pass        
cURL Timeout                       >=300 seconds                                          60                                           Warning     
cURL Version                       >=7.29.0                                               8.18.0                                       Pass        
Function `tmpfile` enabled         N/A                                                    Enabled                                      Pass        
OpenSSL Version                    >=OpenSSL/1.1.0                                        OpenSSL/3.0.18                               Pass        
OpenSSL Working Status             Yes                                                    Yes                                          Pass        
PCRE Backtracking Limit            >=10000                                                1000000                                      Pass        
PHP Allow URL fopen                N/A                                                    YES                                                      
PHP Disabled Functions             N/A                                                    pcntl_fork,                                              
PHP Exif Support                   N/A                                                    YES                                                      
PHP IPTC Support                   N/A                                                    YES                                                      
PHP Loaded Extensions              N/A                                                    Core, PDO, Phar, Reflection, SPL, SimpleXML, Zend OPcache, apcu, bcmath, calendar, cgi-fcgi, ctype, curl, date, dom, elastic_apm, exif, fileinfo, filter, gd, gmagick, gmp, hash, iconv, igbinary, imap, intl, json, lexbor, libxml, mbstring, mcrypt, memcache, memcached, mysqli, mysqlnd, openssl, pcntl, pcre, pdo_mysql, pdo_sqlite, photon-opencv, posix, random, session, soap, sockets, sodium, sqlite3, standard, timezonedb, tokenizer, uri, xml, xmlreader, xmlwriter, xsl, zip, zlib            
PHP Max Execution Time             >=30 seconds                                           850                                          Pass        
PHP Max Input Time                 >=30 seconds                                           850                                          Pass        
PHP Memory Limit                   >=256M                                                 512M                                         Pass        
PHP Post Max Size                  >=2M                                                   2047M                                        Pass        
PHP Safe Mode Disabled             =true                                                  true                                         Pass        
PHP Session enabled                N/A                                                    Enabled                                      Pass        
PHP Upload Max Filesize            >=2M                                                   2047M                                        Pass        
PHP Version                        >=7.4                                                  8.5.3                                        Pass        
PHP XML Support                    N/A                                                    YES                                                      
SSL Extension Enabled              =true                                                  true                                         Pass        
SSL Warnings                       = empty                                                                                             Pass        

### MySQL                          Required                                               Detected                                     Status   ###

MySQL Client Encoding              N/A                                                    utf8mb4                                                  
MySQL Mode                         N/A                                                    ERROR_FOR_DIVISION_BY_ZERO,NO_AUTO_CREATE_USER            
MySQL Version                      >=5.0                                                  11.4.9-MariaDB-log                           Pass        

### Server Configuration           Detected Value                                      ###

Accept Content                     text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/avif,image/webp,image/apng,*/*;q=0.8,application/signed-exchange;v=b3;q=0.7
Accept-Charset Content             N/A                                                    
Architecture                       64         bit                                         
Gateway Interface                  CGI/1.1                                                
HTTPS                              ON                                                     
Memory Usage                       29.43 MB                                               
Operating System                   Linux                                                  
Request Time                       1771055254                                             
Server Protocol                    HTTP/1.1                                               
Server self connect                Not expected HTTP response body:                       
Server Software                    nginx                                                  
User Agent                         Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/144.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

### MainWP Dashboard Settings      Detected Value                                      ###

Abandoned plugins/themes tolerance 365                                                    
Cache control enabled              No                                                     
Enable Uptime Monitoring           Yes                                                    
MainWP Dashboard Version           Latest: 5.4.1.1 | Detected: 5.4.1.1 Pass               
MainWP legacy backups enabled      No                                                     
Maximum number of comments         50                                                     
Maximum number of pages to return                                                         
Maximum number of posts to return  150                                                    
Maximum simultaneous install and update requests3                                                      
Maximum simultaneous requests      4                                                      
Maximum simultaneous requests per ip1                                                      
Maximum simultaneous sync requests 8                                                      
Maximum simultaneous uptime monitoring requests (Default: 10)10                                                     
Minimum delay between requests     200                                                    
Minimum delay between requests to the same ip1000                                                   
Number of connected sites          588                                                    
Optimize data loading              No                                                     
Plugin advanced automatic updates enabledNo                                                     
Primary Backup System              API Backups                                            
REST API enabled                   Yes                                                    
Site health monitoring enabled     Yes                                                    
Theme advanced automatic updates enabledNo                                                     
Use WP Cron                        No                                                     
WP Core advanced automatic updates enabledNo                                                     

### Extensions                     Version                                                License                                      Status   ###

MainWP Article Uploader Extension  5.0.5                                                  Active                                       Pass        
MainWP Comments Extension          5.0                                                    Active                                       Pass        
MainWP Custom Dashboard Extension  5.0.1                                                  Active                                       Pass        
MainWP Database Updater Extension  5.0.4                                                  Active                                       Pass        
MainWP Maintenance Extension       5.0                                                    Active                                       Pass        
MainWP SSL Monitor Extension       5.0.1                                                  Active                                       Pass        
MainWP URL Extractor Extension     5.0                                                    Active                                       Pass        

### Plugin                         Version                                                Status                                    ###

Akismet Anti-spam: Spam Protection 5.6                                                    Active                                       
Jetpack                            15.6-a.1                                               Active                                       
Jetpack Protect                    4.4.1                                                  Active                                       
Jetpack VaultPress Backup          3.7.1                                                  Active                                       
MainWP Dashboard                   5.4.1.1                                                Active                                       
The Bluehost Plugin                3.15.8                                                 Inactive                                     

Thanks for the additional info @ajay_newszy.

Can you try temporarily deactivating all non-MainWP plugins on the Dashboard site and see if that helps?

Also, please keep the console open in browser dev tools and see if anything relevant is being logged during this bulk operation.

Hello,

I have temporarily deactivated all non-MainWP plugins on the Dashboard site as requested.

Unfortunately, the issue still persists with the exact same behavior and error. The bulk publishing process loads for a long time and then fails to return the success confirmation, even though the articles are successfully published to all child sites.

I also kept the browser console open during the operation, and the same issue occurs.

Please advise on the next troubleshooting steps.

Thanks for trying that.

Your cURL timeout is currently set to 60. Try increasing it to 300 and see if that makes a difference.

You can find more information on how to do so here: Resolving System Requirement Issues - MainWP WordPress Management

If the issue is still present after that, please open a private help desk ticket and we will take a closer look: https://mainwp.com/my-account/get-support/

Hello,

Just a quick update .. I have already submitted a private support ticket regarding this issue, but I have not yet received a response.

Since this problem is affecting my bulk publishing workflow significantly, I would appreciate it if you could please check the status of my private ticket.

Thank you for your assistance.

Hey @ajay_newszy

We’ve replied to your help desk ticket. Perhaps it went into spam, or you missed it.

I’ve now DM-ed you here so we can speed up the troubleshooting process.