1 June 2022
How to Schedule Your Posts in WordPress
Are you looking for a way to schedule your posts in WordPress?
If you are a WordPress user, then you can easily schedule your posts to be published at a future date.
In this post, we’ll show you two ways to schedule posts in WordPress – either using an editor or a plugin.
Pros and Cons of Scheduling WordPress Posts
Here are some of the pros of scheduling a post to be published on a specified date:
- Regularly publish new posts even when away or on a long trip, which helps to keep your website active.
- Have extra time to prepare content for special occasions, promotions, or time-sensitive topics.
- Have an organized editorial calendar to maintain great control over your content.
However, there are some cons to scheduling posts, including:
- An error in cron jobs caused WordPress to miss scheduled posts.
- Managing an editorial calendar can be difficult.
How to Schedule Posts in WordPress
Okay, so we’ve covered the pros and cons of scheduling posts in WordPress. Now, let’s discuss how to schedule them.
Schedule Posts Using Editor
WordPress comes with built-in scheduling functionality, which allows you to schedule posts in advance in just seconds. Here’s how to use the tool to schedule a post.
Using Gutenberg Editor
Log in to your website dashboard and follow the steps to schedule WordPress posts using the block editor:
Open the post you want to schedule and click the gear icon in the top right corner. Under Status & Visibility, you’ll see that your post is set to publish Immediately by default.
If you click the Immediately link, it will open a calendar where you can select a future date and time. Once you’ve selected your schedule posts date and time, your Immediately link will change to your specified date and time in the sidebar. Also, your publish button at the top will change to Schedule.
When you click the Schedule button, WordPress will schedule your post.
Your scheduled posts will be published at the time and date you choose.
Using Classic Editor
If you’re using the WordPress classic editor to publish a new post, follow these steps:
Simply head over to the post you want to schedule and look for the Publish meta box at the top right column of the screen. Under the Publish meta box, click on the Edit link next to Publish immediately.
It will now show the date and time options to you. Enter the date and time when you want your blog post to be published, then click the OK button. Your publish button will change to Schedule.
Once you’ve reviewed your post details, click the Schedule button to save your changes.
WordPress will now publish your post on the date and time you entered.
Schedule Posts Using Plugin
Although WordPress offers a built-in feature for scheduling posts, it has limited features. Install a WordPress plugin to help you organize and schedule your posts. One of the top WordPress plugins for scheduling posts is Editorial Calendar.
First, go to your WordPress dashboard and install and activate the Editorial Calendar plugin. For more in detail, see our guide on how to install a plugin in WordPress.
Upon activation, you will see a new menu item Calendar under Posts.
Open the calendar page and click on the Show Unscheduled Drafts button. This will list all unscheduled posts.
Find the post you want to schedule, then drag and drop it onto your preferred date. The plugin will automatically schedule it for this date.
You can also use the plugin to change your content without ever clicking through to the WordPress editor screen – just click the Quick Edit button.
This brings up a simple pop-up that you can use to change your content title, edit the body content, and swap the scheduled time – this last one is especially important as the drag-and-drop calendar can only be used to schedule the date, not the time.
You can also use the plugin’s drag-and-drop functionality to reschedule your posts. To do this, find the content you want to reschedule, then drag it from one date to another in the calendar view. The plugin will automatically update the scheduled date.
Conclusion
Understanding how to schedule posts in WordPress will help you bring more traffic to your blog. Instead of publishing many posts on the same date and time, schedule them at different times based on the traffic on your site. Additionally, your website will look more organized.
To schedule a post in the WordPress editor, go to the Publish section and change the current date and time. If you require additional scheduling tools and functions, consider using a WordPress plugin such as Editorial Calendar.
We hope this post helps you learn how to easily schedule your posts in WordPress. For your next steps, you’ll find these resources helpful:
