Using APCu cache causes duplicated cron runs

Hi there,

Thank you for reaching out — and I’m glad to hear the plugin is already speeding up your website!

🧩 Root of the Issue

What you’re experiencing with WP-Cron running too frequently is related to how WordPress handles scheduled tasks internally. WordPress stores cron schedules inside an option called 'cron', which is marked as autoload and loaded as part of a larger structure called 'alloptions'.

When an object cache like APCu is active, WordPress will try to retrieve 'alloptions' from the cache. If the 'cron' key is missing or not stored correctly in the expected way, WordPress may assume it’s missing — and reschedule the task more aggressively than intended. That can easily lead to hitting external API rate limits or excessive task triggering.

🔧 How We’re Fixing It

We’ve identified this as a compatibility edge case, specific to APCu’s ability to cache the entire 'alloptions' structure — and we’re rolling out a fix to ensure the 'cron' key is never stored in persistent APCu storage, while still keeping it available in memory for the current request.

This ensures WordPress gets 'cron' only once per request (as expected), and doesn’t mistakenly assume it’s missing — preserving correct task intervals and avoiding over-triggering.

🚀 What is “Advanced Object Cache” (AOC)?

The “Advanced Object Cache” (AOC) mode, included in the PRO version, adds deep integration with WordPress internals — including:

• Optimized handling of serialized options
• Smart exclusion of sensitive keys (like 'cron')
• Compatibility with mixed caching environments

This mode is built for performance and correctness — avoiding exactly the kind of issue you’ve encountered.

We’re finalizing and testing this fix now and will push an update shortly.

Thanks again for your feedback — you helped uncover a real edge case!

Best regards,
Chris
ATEC Plugins

Are you using the version from WP directory or from our site?

We are still working on it.

You sound like an advanced user – so could I just send object-cache.php and you disable cache apcu plugin for testing?

Received your msg.