WordPress has a neat feature that allows you schedule your WordPress post for a future date. Lots of beginners don't know about this. In this article, you will learn how to schedule posts in WordPress.

Publishing new content regularly on your site helps you get more pages indexed on search engines, drive new visitors to your site and keep your site readers coming back for more.

There are times, however, where you don't necessarily want your content to appear when you hit the publish button.

For example, here are some instances where you may not want posts to go live as soon as its been added to your site:

• You go on a trip but you still want posts to be published on your blog on a regular basis.
• You need an already published post removed have it be automatically published again at a future date/time.
• You want to publish a daily update with the latest news about a certain topic for your loyal blog readers, but they live in a different time country than you. You'd like them to read your updates each day before they start work, but this means that you'd have to get up at 3 am to publish your post.
• You set aside one day each week to write a whole week's worth of blog posts, or you outsource your content writing to professional writers who deliver you dozens of articles each month, but you don't want to publish all of your new content at once!
• You set up a private content membership area and would like to "drip-feed" posts to members over a period of time.

Wouldn't it be great if you could just add a whole bunch of blog posts to your blog at once, and then have it all be automatically "drip-fed" to your blog so that only one new blog post gets published each day, or week, or every few days?

You could then implement a "set and forget" system for scheduling and publishing fresh content on your blog that would keep your readers regularly engaged, and free up your time to focus on other areas of your business ... or go away for a while and know that your content marketing strategy is still working for you while you're gone.

Well ... with WordPress you can! You can set a date in the future to publish your posts and WordPress will schedule and automatically publish or republish your content on the exact dates and times that you specify.

In this tutorial we are going to show you a little-known feature that lets you schedule WordPress posts to publish at a future date/time, and some great tips for automating your articles for scheduling.

Complete the step-by-step tutorial below to learn more about how to schedule WordPress posts for publishing later.

Scheduling WordPress Posts - Step-By-Step Tutorial

WordPress lets you easily alter the date/time of your published posts, including setting dates and times in the future. This allows to create or add content to your WordPress blog, which can then be pre-set to go live at any given date and time of your choice.

You can schedule posts to publish at a future date with the Quick Edit method if you are viewing a list of all your existing WordPress posts, or you can schedule them as you're working on existing blog posts.

Scheduling WordPress Posts Using The Quick Edit Method

To schedule WP blog posts using the Quick Edit function,

Log into your WordPress admin area and click on Posts > All Posts …

In your Posts section, find the item you want to schedule, then hover your mouse over the post title to display the options menu. Click on Quick Edit…

The Quick Edit feature expands to display all the the "Quick Edit" options for editing your Post ...

Find the "Date" section in the "Quick Edit" inline editor screen ...

WordPress allows you to schedule any aspect of the date and time of your post, just by entering new values in the fields or selecting options from a dropdown date menu ...

Useful Tip: You can schedule WordPress blog posts in the future or backdate posts to show content as having been published prior to the original publishing date.

This is quite useful if, for example, you've been away and would like to publish an account of your day-to-day events and would like your posts to show as having been posted on the actual dates you've been physically absent. Another great use for backdating your blog posts would be to give a brand new website a little bit more of an "established" look. Similarly, you can set all content to publish in the future if you plan to launch your site after getting it all ready and finished.

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Change the date of your post to any date (and time) you would like it to display as having been published (future or past) ...

Note: To schedule a post in the PM, you will need to use the 24-hour clock. For example, to display 1:00 PM enter 13:00 in the scheduling area. The time your post will actually publish is based on the location settings specified in your Settings > General section.

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Click Update to save your changes ...

Your post will now show as being "Scheduled" in your Table of Posts ...

Your post status will also show as being "Scheduled" inside the Quick Edit > Status section ...

How To Schedule Posts In WordPress When Adding Or Editing Posts

If you are creating a new post, you can schedule your post to publish at a future date, by clicking on Publish immediately > Edit…

Change the date (and time if you want) of your post and click the OK button …

Click on the Schedule button to update your post settings ...

Note: To backdate a post in WordPress, simply edit the date before you click Publish, as described above. In this case, the button will not change to Schedule.

Your post is now scheduled to publish on the date and time you have set ...

If you are editing an existing post, you can also schedule your post to be republished at a future date, by clicking on the Edit link next to the Published on: function …

Change the date (and time if you want) of your post and click the OK button …

Click on the Schedule button to update your republishing settings ...

Your post should now show as being scheduled inside the Post Edit > Publish area ...

Your post will now show as being "Scheduled" in your Table of Posts ...

You can also see which scheduled posts are queued for publishing in your WP dashboard's 'Activity' panel ...

Congratulations! Now you know how to schedule WordPress blog posts to publish at a future date.

Let's show you now how to republish WP posts.

Useful Tip: The above method also works for editing WP pages.

How To Republish A WP Post

In some situations, you may want to republish an old post. If you do, there are a few different options you can choose:

Edit Post Date And Time

You can reschedule your post by changing the date and time that the post was published. Enter a futurelater date and time, then click Schedule.

When the scheduled time arrives, the post will jump from its current place in your timeline to the most recent spot on your blog and display the new date and time. The post link will also be updated to reflect the new publication date.

Note: When you reschedule a post, it will not redistribute to your email subscribers. If you want the post to be redistributed to your email subscribers, use the option below.

Edit Post Status

You can republish your post by changing the status of your post to Draft, clicking Update, and then clicking Publish again ...

When you do this, your post will immediately be redistributed to your subscribers. However, the publication date and time will not change, so the post’s link and position in the timeline will stay unmodified.

Tip: If you want a republished post to display first on your site, you can just make it "sticky" ...

Un-Scheduling A WordPress Post

If you've scheduled a WordPress post to publish later, but then change your mind and want to publish it immediately, simply return to the Edit Post screen for your scheduled post.

In the Publish feature, click on the "Edit" link next to the date your post is scheduled for publishing:

Now, just enter today's date and time (tip: if you're not sure of the exact time just type in an hour or two earlier than the current time showing on your clock) as your scheduled post time and click on OK ...

Click Publish ...

Your post will publish right away ...

Troubleshooting Scheduled Posts

If your scheduled post failed to publish when the scheduled time arrived, check the following:

• Is your time zone set correctly in your Settings > General section?
• Check the Post Status. Have you saved the post as a "Draft" instead of scheduling it?
• Did you click the "Schedule" button after editing the date/time? For a post to publish, you must click the Schedule button.
• Did you schedule too many posts for publishing? Are you using bulk post scheduling plugins to queue up thousands of posts? Depending on your server resources, you could experience problems. If so, try decreasing the number of scheduled items and see if this fixes the issue.

Automate Post Scheduling With WP Plugins

You can automate various aspects of publishing and scheduling your content in WordPress with plugins.

Queuing Posts For Publishing

Queue Posts is a free WP plugin that lets you queue new posts and pages for publishing later at a specified interval …

Whenever you create a new WP post or page, the plugin gives you the option of queuing it for later ...

This is great if you are scheduling various posts for publishing at a later date and would like these to be published in a specific order, or between certain times and intervals ...

Bulk Scheduling Posts

There are a number of plugins that let you "autoblog" (adding content automatically to WordPress blogs).

Auto Post Scheduler

Auto Post Scheduler is a free plugin that will schedule 'auto post checks' to publish new posts and/or recycle old posts automatically.

Use a plugin like Auto Post Scheduler to publish new posts and/or recycle old posts automatically. There's no need to schedule post times individually and recycling older posts can revitalize traffic.

This plugin is especially useful if you plan to import a large number of blog posts, as you can set the Auto Post Scheduler to publish posts at whatever frequency you choose as well as specify a range of other settings ...

To learn more, go here: Auto Post Scheduler

WPRobot

Although you may not need all of the features of an "autoblogging" plugin, a plugin like WPRobot includes a module that lets you import bulk posts or article files into your WordPress site, and then set these to automatically publish at regular or random intervals in the future.

To learn more about using this plugin, visit the plugin's site: WP Robot - WordPress Plugin