If it is not possible to set up a cron job then please activate the "frontend worker" in the administration interface.
Once you have installed Friendica and created an admin account as part of the process, you can access the admin panel of your installation and do most of the server wide configuration from there
@ -1233,7 +1233,7 @@ function admin_page_site(App $a) {
'$worker_queues' => array('worker_queues', t("Maximum number of parallel workers"), get_config('system','worker_queues'), t("On shared hosters set this to 2. On larger systems, values of 10 are great. Default value is 4.")),
'$worker_dont_fork' => array('worker_dont_fork', t("Don't use 'proc_open' with the worker"), get_config('system','worker_dont_fork'), t("Enable this if your system doesn't allow the use of 'proc_open'. This can happen on shared hosters. If this is enabled you should increase the frequency of poller calls in your crontab.")),
'$worker_fastlane' => array('worker_fastlane', t("Enable fastlane"), get_config('system','worker_fastlane'), t("When enabed, the fastlane mechanism starts an additional worker if processes with higher priority are blocked by processes of lower priority.")),
'$worker_frontend' => array('worker_frontend', t('Enable frontend worker'), get_config('system','frontend_worker'), t('When enabled the Worker process is triggered when backend access is performed (e.g. messages being delivered). On smaller sites you might want to call yourdomain.tld/worker on a regular basis via an external cron job. You should only enable this option if you cannot utilize cron/scheduled jobs on your server. The worker background process needs to be activated for this.')),
'$worker_frontend' => array('worker_frontend', t('Enable frontend worker'), get_config('system','frontend_worker'), sprintf(t('When enabled the Worker process is triggered when backend access is performed (e.g. messages being delivered). On smaller sites you might want to call %s/worker on a regular basis via an external cron job. You should only enable this option if you cannot utilize cron/scheduled jobs on your server.'), App::get_baseurl())),