Delayed Posting is a Beautiful Thing
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If you’ve never used delayed posting, you’re really missing out. Delayed posting (which may just be what I call it) is the ability to write a post, but not have it show up on your site until later. Why is that great? I’ll tell you.
I use it primarily to keep track of things I want to post about. Anytime inspiration hits, I immediately head over to my control panel, start a new post and save it as a draft. In fact most of the time, it’s only a title. Nothing else. It’s just so I don’t forget the idea.
Then as time goes by (sometimes a few days, sometimes several weeks or more), I’ll come back again and again to add new things to it until it’s ready to go.
Another thing it’s great for is flow control. How many blogs have you seen that have several posts in a single day and then go silent for a week or more? (Is that your blog?) For a better experience, why not spread those posts out a few days? You can still write them all at once while your muse is working, but just set them to actually publish over the course of several days. You know how often you’re likely to post, so try to spread them out evenly over that time period.
Finally, I’ve found it very helpful to finish a post and then set it to publish several hours later. I often find myself thinking more about it later and wanting to tweak what I had written. With it still waiting to be published, I have the luxury of coming back to make those changes before anyone sees it.
In WordPress, you control all of this through the Post Status and Post Timestamp sections in the sidebar of your Write window. If you start a post and Save it without clicking Publish, it’s automatically saved as a draft. Drafts won’t ever show up on the site until you actually click Publish. The Post Timestamp section allows you to set the time it will show up once you’ve clicked Publish. You can set it for a few hours ahead, a few days, even next year. Whatever you need to do.
I’m sure other blogging platforms have the same functionality. Am I right? Have you used this effectively before?
(And yes, this post was just a title several weeks before it was a full post, and then it wasn’t set to publish until several days after I finally finished it up 
)
beth
March 12, 2007
at 8:00 pm
This is a timely post… I wrote 4 posts on sunday and was wondering if I had the capability to change the date if I published them later in the week.
It would be really cool if you could program them to publish when you want without having to go back and click “publish”…kind of like “set it and forget it.” I’m sure the capability is out there but it’s way beyond my scope.
Chris Stark
March 14, 2007
at 10:51 am
Delayed posting is key to maintaining a regularly updated blog. With mine for example, some days I have time to write 3-4 articles, other days I have no time. If I posted everything as it was written, the updates would be so sporadic.
Link Roundup - March 15, 2007 by Fuzzy Future
March 14, 2007
at 12:05 pm
[...] put up a great article on why Delayed Posting is a Beautiful Thing. It goes through the basics of why you might want to use the Wordpress timestamp features [...]
Delayed posting can save your sanity by Fuzzy Future
March 23, 2007
at 2:37 pm
[...] aspects for gaining readers. Last week in our Link Roundup I mentioned an article from over at AskShane.org that discussed this very issue. I just wanted to take a quick moment and share my experience here [...]
90 Days to a Successful Blog
April 12, 2007
at 11:32 am
[...] than posting on random days. Write your posts in advance and use your blogging software’s delayed posting feature to have them post on a consistent [...]
Double Your Search Engine Traffic in 7 Days
April 20, 2007
at 12:16 pm
[...] you traffic because that tells you for sure that these are valuable phrases. You could rank #1 for delayed beautiful thing, but nobody’s searching for that. And if nobody’s searching, nobody’s [...]
Link Roundup - March 15, 2007 | Bookmark Bliss
July 20, 2007
at 5:55 pm
[...] put up a great article on why Delayed Posting is a Beautiful Thing. It goes through the basics of why you might want to use the Wordpress timestamp features [...]
Delayed posting can save your sanity | Bookmark Bliss
July 20, 2007
at 6:07 pm
[...] aspects for gaining readers. Last week in our Link Roundup I mentioned an article from over at AskShane.org that discussed this very issue. I just wanted to take a quick moment and share my experience here [...]
Double Your Search Engine Traffic in 7 Days
October 10, 2007
at 7:56 pm
[...] you traffic because that tells you for sure that these are valuable phrases. You could rank #1 for delayed beautiful thing, but nobody’s searching for that. And if nobody’s searching, nobody’s [...]
chris
March 3, 2008
at 6:48 pm
Isn’t that called simulpost or something?
Shane
March 4, 2008
at 11:17 am
I haven’t ever heard it called that, Chris, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t
Tim Visher
April 4, 2008
at 10:12 am
Thanks so much for this tip! I’d been looking for this functionality for awhile in WP and I never realized that I could just set the time stamp in the future and that would do it. WP should really roll this into a “Delayed Publish” button or something.
Anyway, thanks again, and great tip!
Goran
July 10, 2008
at 4:49 pm
Makes sense, that you can come back and finish. Inspiration comes and goes so you need to keep what you have done. I will go and check it out.