Did you know you can schedule posts in WordPress so that they can automatically be published at a future date? This is a very useful feature that is particularly ideal for bloggers. If you are worried you might forget to publish on time, you can simply schedule the post and when the time is right it will be published automatically. Let us take a look at what you need to do to schedule posts to go live on the day and time that you want.
Why is scheduling so important?
To be a successful blogger, you need to have an editorial calendar and publish new posts regularly. This is where the schedule posts in WordPress come in handy. You can write your posts at your own pace and even get ahead on your calendar. After you are done writing, you simply schedule the posts to be published on specific dates and time.
Scheduling posts helps take advantage of the peak traffic hours. There are certain times when your site gets peak traffic. Publishing at this time will help leverage on the traffic thus increasing page views. Being able to schedule a post is especially important when you live in a different time zone from that of your readers. If peak traffic is at 3am, scheduling can help publish at that time without having to set an alarm. Scheduling will also be useful when you are on vacation.
How to schedule a post
After writing your post, look under the ‘Document’ tab situated on the right column of your edit screen. Under ‘Status & Visibility’ panel select the ‘Immediately’ link located next to the ‘Publish’ option. You will see a date and time picker. Select the date and time you wish for the post to be published. It is also possible to backdate your post using this same feature. Simply select a back date. When you pick a future date, the ‘Publish’ button will change to ‘Schedule’. You then need to click on ‘Schedule’ button and it will be published on the selected date and time.
Schedule in Classic Editor
If you are not using Gutenberg, you can still schedule posts in WordPress. To do this, you need to go to the ‘Publish’ Meta box located on the right column. Click on ‘Edit’ link located next to the ‘Publish Immediately’ option. You will now see the date and time. Select the date and time you wish for the post to be published and click ‘OK’. The ‘Publish’ button will change to ‘Schedule’. When done editing your post, click on ‘Schedule’ and your post will be published on the selected date.
The ability to schedule a post is very helpful. The best thing is that you can also schedule WordPress pages. Leverage on this feature if you publish often.