Time-Delay Posting

Wouldn’t it be useful if you could write blog posts ahead of time, and have them post themselves at some arbitrary date? Most blogging software (Wordpress included) can do this.

Why would you want to?

• If you’re going on a trip, you can write posts in advance…and have them post themselves while you’re away.
• Suppose you wrote an amazing post, and then you had a flood of ideas for another post. You wouldn’t want your new post to detract from the other one, would you? Go ahead and write it, but set it to be posted the day after.

I’m sure you can think of some other reasons.

I went out of state for a week last month, and my post-rate suffered. I barely managed to write two posts in that whole two days (on NTugo). I’m going on a trip again next month. What am I going to do about my blogging? I already wrote a few posts for then, Webmaster-Source’s server will automatically post them on the days I specified. Chances are, you won’t know when I’m not actually posting them live. Cool, or what?

How do you time-delay your posts? It varies, depending on your blogging software. You can probably find instructions on you’re blogging software’s website. Here’s how to do it in Wordpress:

1. Write your post as usual.
2. To the right, there’s a column of expandable boxes. Open-up the “Post Status” and “Post Timestamp” boxes.
3. In the “Post Status” box, change the setting from “Draft” to “Published”.
4. In the “Post Timestamp” box, check the “Edit Timestamp” checkbox.
5. Now, input the date and time you want the post to be published at. Select the month, then put in the date and time. Note that the time is in 24-hour format.
6. Hit “Publish”.

I recommend you find the post on the “Manage Posts” page, and preview it. You want to make sure there are no errors, obviously.

Now, sit back and wait. The post will be published on the date and time you specified.

Tags: Blogging, WordPress