Multiple cron jobs vs daily cron job doing multiple things? Which one yields better performance and scalability?

Question

I have some events within WordPress that users can register for. I would like to give access to certain content ON THE DAY of the event.

So, I have 2 possible approaches:

Every time a user registers for the event, I schedule a WP cron job event for the day of the event that gives them access to restricted content.

Or, tag the users with the date of the event they chose, and run a daily WP cron-job which checks all users and gives them access to the restricted content IF the date on the user matches the current date.

Since I'm quite a newbie - which one is the better approach (performance, scalability, etc)?

Maybe there's a third, better solution I haven't thought of as well :)

Answer 1

I don't think I would use cron jobs for this at all. If I was writing code for it I would probably have a check on the page that just says if the user is part of x group and date is greater than the event start date then render the page, otherwise return a message saying it's too early, check back later.

Either that or just setup the page/post so it's scheduled to publish on the date of the event. If the content should only be available to users in a certain group use a membership plugin with the ability to restrict content to members of that group.

When you schedule a post it will get picked up by the WordPress cron, this can be setup in a couple of different ways.