How to Schedule WordPress Posts
One of the hands-down best things about being a content creator in the 21st century is the sheer number of tools you can use to create better posts. Whether you need a tool to remind you to keep your sentences short or one that helps your posts reach your audience, you’ll have no trouble finding it.
But WordPress users can do lots of things without needing additional tools. Anyone who’s ever tried to schedule WordPress posts will tell you that you don’t need a plugin to do it.
In this article, we’ll show you:
When your post — or a page — needs to appear online at a specific time, scheduling WordPress posts is the best way to do it. But perfect timing isn’t the only reason why you’d want to schedule WordPress posts. Here’s how a more complete list of reasons might look like:
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For consistency. Your posts can appear online at the same time of the day, or the same day of the week, regardless of when you create them.
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For convenience. You can create posts in batches and then set up publishing dates for each post.
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For timing. If you’re building up hype for a piece of content, you can schedule it so that it appears at the exact time you advertised.
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To save time. You really don’t need to be by your computer and wait for an exact time to hit that “Publish” button.
Scheduling posts helps you better manage your workload regarding your website’s content. It might not create articles for you or build your website’s pages, but it will help you by automating a small part of the publishing process.
The post scheduling functionality works the same in the Classic Editor as it does in Guttenberg. When you want to create a new post, navigate over to Posts > Add New from the dashboard.
If you’re using the Classic Editor, you’ll do the scheduling from the Publish tab on the right-hand side of the screen. By default, publishing is set to “immediately,” but you can change that by clicking on “Edit.”
When you press it, you’ll see the fields that allow you to choose the date and time when you want the post to be published.
Pick a date and a time that works for you, and then press the “Ok” button.
When you’re done creating the post, simply click on the “Schedule” button and your post will be sent to the publishing queue.
In Guttenberg, you’ll also point your eyes towards the upper right-hand corner of the screen, but you’ll be looking for a tab with a different name — “Status & Visibility.” There, you’ll find the “Publish” option.
After clicking on the word “Immediately,” you’ll see the menu for setting up the date and time when your post will be published.
After you’ve chosen the date and time, you’ll see that the word “Immediately” has changed to the date and time you picked.
When the post is ready, press the blue “Schedule” button at the top of the screen. Your post will appear online at the time you chose, as easy as that.
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When you schedule a post in WordPress, the status of the post will change to “Scheduled.” You’ll be able to see the status of a post right there from the post list.
However, if you have a lot of posts you’ve scheduled, it might be hard or impractical to track down one by one.
That’s exactly why you have the options at the top of the list that allow you to see only the posts of specific statuses, be they published, drafts, private, or posts in the trash. You’ll see “Scheduled” there, too, if you have scheduled posts.
When you click on the blue “Scheduled” text, you’ll get a post list containing only the scheduled posts you’ve created.
If you’ve changed your mind and want to publish one of your scheduled posts immediately, don’t worry — it’s incredibly easy to do. For starters, you want to navigate to the post you want to push out right away. Edit the post using your editor of choice.
Access the same menu you used to schedule the post in the first place. Instead of choosing a date in the future, you can set the current time and date, or any time in the past. The “Schedule” button you used to schedule the post will now turn into “Publish,” and pressing it will make your post go live.
Sometimes, neither publishing a scheduled post now nor letting it be published at the scheduled time is the option you’re looking for. When you want to just remove a post from the publishing queue, all you need to do is change its status back to “Draft.”
In the Classic Editor, you can change the status of your post from the “Publish” tab. Click on the blue “Edit” text next to the current status, “Published,” and choose “Draft” from the dropdown menu that appears.
Clicking the “OK” button will change the status of your post to “Draft,” effectively stopping its scheduled release.
If you’re using the Gutenberg editor, things are even easier for you. Right on the top of the page, you’ll see a built-in option to switch the status of your post to “Draft.”
After clicking the option, you’ll see a window asking you whether you’re sure you want to unschedule the post. Click the “OK” button, and your post will become a draft.
Let’s Wrap It Up!
When it comes to tasks that make prime candidates for obliteration via automation, publishing posts or pages at a specific time is the perfect example. Most of us have better things to do than set up reminders to publish posts on our websites in an exact time, let alone wait for the clock to strike the right time just so we can press a button.
WordPress developers were way ahead of you when they built post scheduling functionality into the platform. Thanks to them, you can easily schedule your posts without the need to jump through unnecessary hoops or burden your resources, even though you can, if you want to, schedule posts with a plugin. All you need to do is remember to set it all up, and let WP take care of the rest.
