WordPress makes it relatively easy to schedule when your posts are published. But the first time you schedule a post, it is easy to get tripped up, resulting in the post not going live when you want it to, or worse, not going live at all. The tips below should help you avoid WordPress scheduling woes.
Why Schedule?
It is generally accepted that posting blogs on weekdays gets you the most eyeballs, especially for business related topics. The best time to publish a post is debatable and varies based on your topic, your physical location, and many other variables. But let’s say that you’ve determined that 6AM is the best time to publish your posts and let’s also say that you are a night owl who hasn’t seen 6AM in 10 years; you’re going to need to schedule your posts in order for them to go live at 6AM!
Scheduling posts is also invaluable if you stockpile posts and want to spread them out evenly over a month. Scheduling also allows you maintain a consistent posting schedule, even when you’re on vacation, and even if you don’t bring your computer on vacation!
Set your timezone
The first step to avoiding scheduling pain in WordPress is to make sure that your time zone is set correctly.
In the WordPress admin console, go to Settings > General. Set your timezone appropriately, relative to UTC. For example, ChirpUp.com is based in Chicago which is UTC -5 for CDT or -6 hours for CST. If you don’t know the setting for your time zone, find it here: http://www.timeanddate.com/library/abbreviations/timezones/
If you live in an area that participates in daylight savings, unfortunately WordPress does not deal with daylight savings changes. You will need to either reset your timezone settings everytime you begin or end daylight savings OR just live with the one hour difference if you don’t care about the EXACT hour that your posts will be published.
Recipe for Scheduling a Post
Scheduling posts is not hard, but it’s easy to miss a step. Follow the steps below for bulletproof WordPress post scheduling:
1. Write a post. Don’t publish it yet!
2. Go to the upper right hand side of the post editor page next to the words “Publish immediately” select Edit (see below)
3. A date control will be revealed (see below). Set the date and time that you want the post to go live.
4. Hit OK (see above).
5. Hit the Schedule button (see below, this is a step that is easily missed; several times I’ve screwed this up and my posts haven’t gone live)
6. Verify that the screen now says “Scheduled for YOUR DATE/TIME TO PUBLISH“. Your post is now scheduled!
7. Double verify: go to the WordPress posts area (click Posts in the left sidebar of the WordPress admin console) and you should see the list of posts including your new post. Under the date column, it should say how long before your new post will be published. If you have set your post to publish within the next day or less, this is a good way to verify that your time zone settings are set correctly. If it is 2AM and you want to publish your post at 6AM, it should say “4 hours from now scheduled”
That’s it.
Bonus: When is the best time to post?
Here are a few posts to get you thinking about determining your best time to post:
- http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2006/06/15/when-is-the-best-time-and-day-to-post-on-your-blog/
- http://www.seopher.com/articles/when_is_the_best_time_to_publish_posts_on_my_blog_
- http://3.rdrail.net/blog/thurday-at-noon-is-the-best-time-post-and-be-noticed-pst/
Schedule away!
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Andy Sernovitz
CopyBlogger
Gary Vaynerchuk
April 19th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
I don’t think there is necessarily a “good” time to post a new blog; I think that any time is a good time, as people are always going to be visiting your site. The more content, the better. The timing of your posts is not likely to hurt your blog’s visits, if it’s a good read.
However, the schedule feature does have many benefits. There have been so many times when I wanted to post two or three topics in one day but didn’t want to bury the first post. It is always great to schedule those “extra” posts for the next several days; it gives me a break from having to come up with new content!
June 15th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
do you know how to unschedule a post?
thanks!
June 15th, 2009 at 7:57 pm
sdk:
to unschedule, just hit *edit* next to the status in the upper left of the post edit page and select “Draft” and hit “OK”. Then click “Update Post”.