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Scheduling WordPress Posts – Basic WP Tutorials

This article is brought to you courtesy of The Online Beginners Hub where you can learn everything you need to know as a beginner online.

WordPress has a great hidden feature that lets you Schedule posts. Lots Of newbies haven’t discovered this yet. In this tutorial, we will show you how to schedule WP posts and pages.

Publishing fresh content on your WordPress site on a regular basis helps you get more pages indexed on search engines, drive new visitors to your business and keep your blog readers returning for more.

There are instances, however, where you may not want content to be Published immediately.

For example, here are some situations when you may not want to show a WordPress post as soon as its been added to the WordPress CMS:

  • You travel a lot but you still want posts being published on your blog while you’re away.
  • You need to remove a previously published post and automatically republish it at a specific time and date in the future.
  • You would like to distribute a daily blog post with the latest news about a certain topic for your loyal blog readers, but they live in a different time zone than you. You’d like them to read your posts each day at a certain time, but this means that you’d have to get up at 3:30 am to hit the “publish” button.
  • You set aside one day every week to write a whole week’s worth of articles for your website, or you outsource your content creation to freelance writers who deliver you dozens of articles each month, but you don’t want to publish all of your new content at the same time!
  • You launch an online training course and would like to “drip-feed” blog posts to members over a set period of time.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could just add a bunch of posts to your site in one go, and then have it automatically “drip-fed” to your blog so that only one new blog post got published each day, or week, or every few days?

You could then implement a “set and forget” system for scheduling and publishing new content to your blog that would keep your readers regularly engaged, and be free to focus on other areas of your business … or leave for a while and know that your content marketing strategy is still working for you.

Well … with WordPress you can! You can set a date/time in the future for publishing your Blog Posts and WordPress will schedule and automatically publish or republish your content exactly when you have specified.

In the tutorial below we are going to show you a little-known feature that lets you schedule WP blog posts to publish at a later date/time, plus time-saving tips for automating certain aspects of publishing your scheduled posts.

Go through the tutorial below to learn more about how to schedule WordPress posts.

 

How To Schedule WP Posts – Step-By-Step Tutorial

WordPress allows you to modify the date/time of your published blog posts, including specifying exact dates and times in the future. This enables you to create or add blog posts to your WordPress blog, which can then be preconfigured to display live at any given date and time of your choice.

You can schedule posts to publish at a future date with the Quick Edit feature when viewing a list of all your existing WP posts, or you can schedule them when you’re editing or adding new blog posts.

 

Scheduling Posts In WordPress Using The Quick Edit Feature

To schedule posts in WordPress using the Quick Edit feature,

Log into your WordPress admin area and choose Posts > All Posts

In your Posts screen, find the Post you want to schedule, then hover your mouse over the post title to display the options menu and click on Quick Edit

The Quick Edit inline editor expands to display all of the “Quick Edit” options for editing posts …

Find the “Date” feature …

WordPress lets you easily set any aspect of the date and time of your post, simply by entering new values in the fields or choosing options from the dropdown date menu …

Useful Tip: You can schedule blog posts in WordPress in the future or backdate posts to show content as having been published prior to its original date of publication.

This is quite useful if, for example, you’ve been away and would like to publish an account of your experiences and would like your post dates to reflect the same dates you’ve been away. Another reason to backdate your posts would be to give a brand new website a little bit more of an “established” look. Likewise, you can set all posts to publish in the future if you plan to launch your site at a future time.

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Change the date of your post to whatever date (and/or time) you would like it to display as having been published (future or past) …

Note: To schedule a post as being published in the PM, you will need to use the 24-hour clock. For example, 1:00 PM would read as 13:00 in the post scheduling area. The time your post will actually end up being published depends on the location settings set in your Settings > General area.

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Click Update to save your changes …

Your post status will now show as being “Scheduled” in your Table of Posts …

Your post status will also show as being “Scheduled” inside the Quick Edit > Status feature …

 

Scheduling WordPress Posts When Adding / Editing Posts

If you are creating a new post, you can schedule your post to publish at a later date, by clicking on Publish immediately > Edit

Change the date (and time if you want) of your post and click OK

Don’t forget to click on Schedule to update your settings …

Tip: To backdate a blog post, simply edit the date before you click the Publish button, as described above. In this case, the button will not change to Schedule.

Your post is now scheduled for publishing on the date and time you have specified …

If you are editing an existing post, you can also schedule your post to be republished later, by clicking on the Edit link next to the Published on: field …

Change the date (and time if you want) of your post and click the OK button …

Remember to click the Schedule button to save your republishing settings …

Your post will show as being “Scheduled” inside the Post Edit > Publish area …

Your post status will now show as being “Scheduled” in your Posts area …

You can also see which scheduled posts are queued for publishing in your WP dashboard’s ‘Activity’ panel …

Congratulations! Now you know how to schedule WordPress posts to publish at a future date.

Let us show you now how to republish existing WP posts.

Useful Tip: The above method also works for editing WP pages.

 

Republishing A WordPress Post

In some instances, you may need to republish an old post. If you do, there are a few options you can use to do this:

Edit Post Date And Time

You can reschedule your post by changing the date and time that the post was published. Enter a futurelater date and time, then click Schedule.

When the scheduled time arrives, the post will jump from its current place in your timeline to the most recent spot on your blog and display the new date and time. The post link will also update to reflect the new publication date.

Note: When you reschedule a post, it will not redistribute to your email subscribers. If you need the post to be redistributed to your email subscribers, use the option below.

 

Edit Post Status

You can republish your post by changing the status of your post to Draft, clicking Update, and then clicking Publish again …

When you do this, your post will immediately redistribute to your subscribers. However, the publication date and time will not change, so the post’s link and position in your timeline will stay the same.

Tip: If you want a republished post to show up first on your site, you can just make it “sticky” …

 

Unscheduling A Blog Post

If you’ve scheduled a WP post to be published in the future, but changed your mind and want to publish it immediately, simply return to the Edit Post page for your scheduled post.

In the Publish module, click on the “Edit” link next to the date your post is scheduled to publish:

Now, just enter today’s date and time (tip: if you’re not sure of the exact time just type in an hour or two earlier than your current time) as your scheduled post time and click on OK

Click Publish

Your post will now be published right away …

 

Troubleshooting Scheduled Posts

If your scheduled post failed to publish when the scheduled time arrived, check the following:

  • Is your timezone set correctly in your Settings > General section?
  • Check your Post Status. Did you save your post as a “Draft” instead of scheduling it?
  • Did you click the “Schedule” button after changing the date/time settings? For a post to publish, you must click the Schedule button.
  • Did you schedule too many posts for publishing? Are you using bulk post scheduling plugins to queue up thousands of posts? Depending on your hosting setup, you could experience problems. If so, try reducing the number of scheduled items and see if this solves the issue.

 

Automate Post Scheduling With WordPress Plugins

You can automate various aspects of publishing and scheduling posts in WordPress using plugins.

 

Queuing Posts For Publishing

Queue Posts is a free plugin that lets you place new posts and pages in a queue for publishing later at a specified interval …

Whenever you create a new post or page, the plugin gives you the option of queuing it for later …

This is great if you are scheduling a number of posts for publishing at a later date and would like these to be published in a specific order, or at specific times and intervals …

 

Bulk Schedule Posts

There are a number of plugins designed for “autoposting” or “autoblogging” (add content automatically to WordPress sites).

AutoPost Scheduler

Auto Post Scheduler is a free WP plugin that will schedule ‘auto post checks’ to publish new posts and/or recycle old posts automatically.

Use a plugin like Auto Post Scheduler to publish new posts and/or recycle old posts automatically. There’s no need to schedule post times individually and recycling older posts keeps your site looking fresh.

This plugin is especially useful when importing a large number of posts, as you can set the Auto Post Scheduler to publish posts at whatever frequency you choose as well as specify a range of other settings …

To learn more, visit the plugin website here: Auto Post Scheduler

WPRobot

Although you may not want all of the features of an “autoblogging” plugin, a plugin like WPRobot includes a module that lets you bulk import posts or article files into your WordPress site, and then set these to automatically publish at regular or random intervals in the future.

For more information about this plugin, visit their website: WP Robot – WordPress Autoposting Software

Do you have any comments or questions about this tutorial? Feel free to add your thoughts below and share this article with your friends.

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Till next time,

Dale.

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Disclaimer: This site is not associated with WordPress or any of the WordPress-related products written about on this site. We may derive a financial benefit from sales of products advertised, reviewed or linked to from this site. All information used in this review have been supplied from the plugin’s website and sites that provide premium WP services.

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Scheduling WordPress Posts – Basic WP Tutorials

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