Horizon Configuration

Mixpost uses Laravel Horizon to manage queue workers. Starting with v5, Mixpost provides a built-in helper that generates Horizon supervisor configurations based on your server's resources.

This guide explains how Horizon tiers work and how to configure them for your environment.

How it works

Mixpost dispatches jobs onto four dedicated queues:

Queue	Purpose
publish-post	Post publishing, isolated for reliability
mixpost-analytics	Provider data imports and backfills (highest volume)
mixpost-media	Remote media downloads and thumbnail generation
default	Webhooks, notifications, deletions, token refresh

The Inovector\Mixpost\Horizon helper class generates Horizon supervisors that listen on these queues, sized appropriately for your server. You select a tier that matches your VPS resources, and Mixpost handles the rest.

Available tiers

Tier	RAM	Supervisors	Best for
starter	< 3 GB	1 (all queues combined)	Small or testing setups
basic	< 6 GB	2 (publishing + shared)	Low-traffic instances
growth	< 10 GB	3 (publishing, analytics, default+media)	Medium-traffic instances
scale	10+ GB	4 (one per queue)	High-traffic instances

Starter

A single supervisor handles all queues. Suitable for development or small instances with minimal activity.

• Supervisor: mixpost-all
• Queues: publish-post, mixpost-analytics, mixpost-media, default
• Processes: 1-2
• Memory: 192 MB per process

Basic

Separates publishing from everything else. This ensures post publishing is not blocked by analytics or media jobs.

• Supervisor mixpost-publishing: publish-post (1-3 processes, 256 MB)
• Supervisor mixpost-shared: mixpost-analytics, mixpost-media, default (2-5 processes, 320 MB)

Growth

Adds a dedicated analytics supervisor. Recommended for most production deployments.

• Supervisor mixpost-publishing: publish-post (2-6 processes, 256 MB)
• Supervisor mixpost-analytics: mixpost-analytics (2-8 processes, 256 MB)
• Supervisor mixpost-default: default, mixpost-media (2-4 processes, 384 MB)

Scale

Each queue gets its own supervisor with higher process limits. The media supervisor has extra memory for ffmpeg processing.

• Supervisor mixpost-publishing: publish-post (2-10 processes, 256 MB)
• Supervisor mixpost-analytics: mixpost-analytics (2-12 processes, 256 MB)
• Supervisor mixpost-media: mixpost-media (1-3 processes, 512 MB)
• Supervisor mixpost-default: default (2-6 processes, 256 MB)

Setting the tier

Auto-detection (default)

By default, Mixpost detects your server's available RAM and selects the appropriate tier automatically. It reads memory from:

1. Docker cgroup (containers)
2. /proc/meminfo (Linux)
3. sysctl (macOS)

If detection fails, it falls back to basic.

Environment variable (recommended)

Pin the tier explicitly in your .env file to avoid unexpected changes, especially when your CI/deploy machine has different RAM than production:

MIXPOST_HORIZON_TIER=growth

warning

If you run php artisan config:cache during deployment, the auto-detected tier is frozen at cache time. If the build machine has different RAM than the production server, you will get the wrong tier. Always set MIXPOST_HORIZON_TIER explicitly in production.

In code

You can also pass the tier directly when calling the helper:

'defaults' => Horizon::supervisors('growth'),

Applying the configuration

In your config/horizon.php, use the Horizon::supervisors() helper:

use Inovector\Mixpost\Horizon;

return [
    // ... standard Horizon settings (domain, path, waits, trim, metrics, memory_limit, etc.) ...

    'defaults' => Horizon::supervisors(),

    'environments' => [
        'production' => Horizon::supervisors(),
        'local'      => Horizon::supervisors(),
    ],
];

Custom overrides

You can override specific supervisor settings while keeping the tier defaults:

'defaults' => Horizon::supervisors('growth', [
    'mixpost-publishing' => ['maxProcesses' => 15],
]),

Verifying the configuration

Run the following command to see which tier is active and how supervisors are configured:

php artisan mixpost:horizon-tier

You can also preview a different tier without changing your configuration:

php artisan mixpost:horizon-tier starter

Queue environment variables

You can rename the queues if needed. After any change, run php artisan config:cache && php artisan horizon:terminate.

Variable	Default	Description
MIXPOST_HORIZON_TIER	auto-detected	Force a specific tier
MIXPOST_HORIZON_CONNECTION	mixpost-redis	Queue connection for Horizon supervisors (must match config/queue.php)
MIXPOST_QUEUE_DEFAULT	mixpost-default	Generic jobs queue
MIXPOST_QUEUE_PUBLISH_POST	publish-post	Post publishing queue
MIXPOST_QUEUE_ANALYTICS	mixpost-analytics	Analytics import queue
MIXPOST_QUEUE_MEDIA	mixpost-media	Media processing queue

See the environment variables reference for the full list of Mixpost environment variables.