Answers.Body: <p>See here: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cron">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cron</a></p>
  
  <p>It's probably not that it's stopping - but that it was never set up.  CiviCRM won't do any tasks that need to happen automatically - including sending mails, updating membership statuses, etc. - until you set up cron.  I don't think any of the CMSes that support CiviCRM work reliably without setting up cron, either.</p>
  
  <p>I can't explain how to set up cron for CiviCRM without knowing a lot more about your environment - your CMS version and your hosting environment.  If you're using CPanel or a similar control panel for your hosting, there will be a way to set up cron from within the control panel.  There's some instructions on <a href="https://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Managing+Scheduled+Jobs#ManagingScheduledJobs-Command-lineSyntaxforRunningJobs">this page</a> that are specific to CiviCRM.</p>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2016-03-20T16:41:38.623Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2016-03-20T16:41:38.623Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: Jon G - Megaphone Tech
Body: <p>What is cron and why does it keep stopping?  What is the effect when it does?</p>
  
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2016-03-30T18:55:18.630Z
Comments.Text: Nod - are you on WP? There is a similar question being asked here http://civicrm.stackexchange.com/questions/10822/system-status-error-cron-not-running-after-update-to-4-7-4
Comments.UserDisplayName: petednz - fuzion
Tags: <cron>
Title: What is Cron? It keeps on telling me that it's not running
ThreadText: # What is Cron? It keeps on telling me that it's not running
  
  (Asked by: username_0 on 2016-03-20)
  
  What is cron and why does it keep stopping? What is the effect when it does?
  
  **Tags:** cron
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_1**: Nod - are you on WP? There is a similar question being asked here http://civicrm.stackexchange.com/questions/10822/system-status-error-cron-not-running-after-update-to-4-7-4  
  
  ---
  
  ## 1 answers
  
  ### Answer by username_2 on 2016-03-20. Score: 6
  
  See here: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cron>
  
  It's probably not that it's stopping - but that it was never set up. CiviCRM won't do any tasks that need to happen automatically - including sending mails, updating membership statuses, etc. - until you set up cron. I don't think any of the CMSes that support CiviCRM work reliably without setting up cron, either.
  
  I can't explain how to set up cron for CiviCRM without knowing a lot more about your environment - your CMS version and your hosting environment. If you're using CPanel or a similar control panel for your hosting, there will be a way to set up cron from within the control panel. There's some instructions on [this page](https://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Managing+Scheduled+Jobs#ManagingScheduledJobs-Command-lineSyntaxforRunningJobs) that are specific to CiviCRM.
  
  
  ---
  
  