Working Ahead – Future Posts with WordPress

Two issues strike to the very soul and spirit of bloggers: Providing a continuous stream of blog posts and finding something to blog about.

Luckily with WordPress, both issues can actually be easily addressed.

Everyone experiences those great spurts of energy, and blogging is no exception. Suddenly you are filled with inspiration and motivation to express yourself. You have 100 story ideas pulsating in your head and you just have to unload them all. You sit down in front of your computer and spew forth tons of words. Some congeal into nothing, but a lot of them coagulate into blog posts. You quickly hit the feeds and search engines to find related material and whip up articles left, right, and sideways.

With all this energy driven content, do you post every one all at the same time? Or as they happen?

Fortunately with WordPress you don’t have to publish them all at the very same moment. Even personal life stories can be spread across several days as part of your storytelling. If you publish them all at the same time, when the creative burst of energy is done, you end up with a dry spell, loss for words and enthusiasm for blogging. Then the panic over providing a continuous stream of blog posts moves in. You might even experience Blogger’s Block, the inability to come up with blog post material as you watch the dates pass and no blogging inspiration hits.

I travel a lot, and often find myself whole days and weeks away from any form of Internet connection, so I understand the need to post without the ability to post. I might have a ton to blog about, but no way to access my sites. So I take advantage of the creative burst of blogging energy to write up a bunch of articles just waiting to be added to my blogs when I run into a creative dry spell or when I know I’ll be traveling, so you all can stay informed and educated on WordPress and blogging.

The need to ensure there is a daily or even weekly offering made to the blogging world through your blog, take advantage of the future posts feature with WordPress. It’s available on all versions of WordPress.

In the Write Post panel, in the sidebar to the right you will see a section for Post Timestamp. In WordPress 2.x, you have the ability to rearrange these sidebar elements, so your Post Timestamp section may be in a different spot than the example shown here.

If the section isn’t open, click the + (plus) to open it up.

In the Post Timestamp section, you will see a check box that says Edit timestamp and a drop down box for the month, and forms for the date and time. You can change any of these to change the date and time your post will be published. You must, however, check the Edit timestamp check box in order for the change to take place. Forget the check box and when you click Publish, your post will be seen by the world instantly.

By setting the date in the future, WordPress will hold onto the post until the date and time passes and then release it on schedule. There are no limits to the dates you can set. You can set a post to publish in 2018 if you really wanted to work that far in advance. Nothing like planning ahead.

When you are ready, with the check box for Edit timestamp checked, you can Publish your WordPress post and it will release on that date and at that time.

To check the schedule of when which post will be released, visit your Manage > Posts panel in the WordPress Administration Panels. The list is set chronologically, from the future posts or most recent down. Today, I know that I will be traveling much of the next month or two, so I have a lot of posts ready to go. To see what is released now, I may have to go back several post list pages to get to today’s post.

If you want to release one post a day, and make a mistake and set several posts for the same future date, you will notice this discrepancy immediately in the Manage > Posts panel. Choose which post you want to change the date on, click EDIT and change the date, remembering to click the check box for Edit timestamp to ensure the new date and time take effect. Click SAVE and the post is saved along with the new date information.

Even if I’m working on today’s set of posts before I return to my “real job”, I won’t change the date, but I will change the times so my posts don’t come out at one time but over several hours. This also gives the illusion that I’m working on my blog all day long. 😉

In theory, you can put 365 future posts and walk away from your WordPress blog and let it do its thing by itself for a year. Before the year is up, add another 365 future posts to keep the content going, and your blogging work is almost done. You are left with just checking comments and some basic blog administration on a regular basis.

Thus, when you have your next bout of creative energy, you can work far in advance and then still have content coming out on a regular schedule with WordPress to get you through the busy or dry times.

Related Posts

• Hundreds of Resources for Finding Content for Your Blog
• Looking for Blogging Ideas?
• The Key to Blogging Success: Perseverance
• Make Blogging with WordPress Part of Your Daily Routine
• Writing a Blog and Engaging Readers
• Do You Ever Think About What You Write About?
• Bursty Blogging – Studying email, letter writing, and blogging
• Hook, Line and Sinker: Luring Blog Traffic to Stay
• Why I Choose WordPress as My CMS
• Define Blogging Success
• Blog Writing
• Blogging and Blogging Tips
• WordPress Tips, Tricks and Techniques

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, member of the 9Rules Network