Looking for a way to automatically schedule posts for X number of days past your current latest post?
On another blog I write a handful of posts at a time and schedule them out over several days. But I have to keep going back and forth to the post list to check dates. This plugin adds a link to the new post page that will automatically set the date for the post you’re working on based on the last post on your site. It’s a subtle little link. Take a look at the screen shot to the right. Notice where it says ‘Auto’ next to ‘Edit’. Clicking that will run an Ajax call that will get the next date.
Options
Two sets of options for you.
The start and end time are the earliest and latest times respectively that you want posts published. The plugin will pick a random time somewhere in between the two.
The day different between the last post and the newly scheduled post will be somewhere between min days and max days away from the current latest date. In the example above the next post will always be 2 days after the current latest, but if you want a little more randomness you can enter different numbers.
One note: The plugin does not necessarily use the date of the last post. If there is a future dated post it will schedule based on that date. If there aren’t any future dated posts it will date based on the current date.
#1 by Ryan on January 16, 2011 - 11:34 am
Okay, I know it’s a little hinky to comment on my own plugin, but this one has already made up for the time I spent writing it. Just put about half a dozen future dated posts up on another blog and didn’t have to look at the calendar once. One click to set the date and I’ve got posts scheduled every two days for the next week or so.
#2 by Erik on April 1, 2011 - 5:35 pm
Hello,
I’ve tried your plugin and it’s nice, but is there anyway to automaticly make it schedule all posts 1 hour ahead of the last scheduled post?
Anyway, great job, like this plugin, best one i’ve found so far the other ones have been bugged and/or not working at all.
Keep it up.
#3 by Ryan on April 2, 2011 - 12:34 pm
Sounds like a good idea. Went with the minimum, maximum days because that’s what I needed.
Maybe the thing to do is have a min / max numeric field that also lets you pick whether that minimum is days, hours, or minutes.
#4 by Erik on April 2, 2011 - 1:10 pm
Would be extreamly cool Ryan.
Actually if you’re up for the challenge to modify this plugin to just make the auto button add +1 hour from the latest post (including already scheduled post) i’d pay you for it, how much would you charge?
Thank you Ryan!
#5 by Ryan on April 2, 2011 - 3:46 pm
Just committed a new version to the WordPress plugin library that lets you put the time different in days, hours, and minutes instead of just days. So if you wanted to post an hour apart you could enter 0:01:00 as both the min and max time difference.
Might take it a little while to actually go live though. It’s usually within an hour or so.
As far as “charging”, there’s a donate link on the top of the site for that sort of thing. Whatever you feel is fair would be appreciated :)
#6 by erik on April 2, 2011 - 6:32 pm
Nice update, however it seems it does not take already scheduled posts into consideration when making the time adjustments.
For example, i press auto, and schedule one post, the next one i schedule will still be the exact same time as the old one, same for the next one.
I’ll throw a donation your way once i’ve gotten it to work, thank you Ryan you’re very helpful! :)
#7 by Ryan on April 2, 2011 - 7:28 pm
Should be cleared up now. Stupid switch on my part that was ignoring any future posts. I just checked it by setting the min and max time to an hour and scheduled about a dozen posts, looping back around the earliest and latest times.
It’s committed to WP, but like before it may take an hour or so to show up.
#8 by Erik on April 3, 2011 - 10:38 am
Very nice Ryan, works great now!
I dropped you a little donation to, thank you!!
#9 by Ryan on April 3, 2011 - 11:53 am
Must appreciated Erik – both for the donation and the suggestion. I think your suggestion made the plugin much more useful to others.
#10 by Rick on April 12, 2011 - 12:14 pm
Plugin is great. Is it possible to work on publishing pages, too?
#11 by Ryan on April 12, 2011 - 4:01 pm
Probably could, but I hadn’t thought about needing to post date pages.
#12 by Rick on April 22, 2011 - 9:51 am
When using 3rd-party WP templates pages are featured on homepage rather than posts. Allowing future dating pages would help in production efforts to keep sites fresh.
I can’t tell you how awesome and helpful this plugin is!
#13 by Ryan on April 22, 2011 - 10:00 am
That actually make a lot of sense. I’ve never done a page that needed to be delayed, so it just never occurred to me to do it. I’ll see what I can come up with. I assume it shouldn’t be that significant of a change to get it working.
#14 by Steve Duncan on May 18, 2011 - 11:33 am
This is sooooo close to what I need. Is there any way to make it so all posts get future dates without having to be on the edit page and hit the auto button? I’d like posts posted via the iPhone app to be scheduled without having to visit the blog itself.
#15 by Ryan on May 18, 2011 - 12:45 pm
It should be possible. I’ll have hook on the post actually getting published which should be doable.
#16 by Morten Nielsen on August 30, 2011 - 4:48 pm
Did you ever hook this up to do it automatically on all published posts?
I almost never write my posts in wordpress instead I upload them using various blogging tools. If this plugin could be set up for scheduling automagically 7 days after the futuremost post then it is exactly what I need.
#17 by anon on May 19, 2011 - 6:06 am
Im getting a bug when using this. If I press AUTO and it inserts a time/date and press ‘Update’ it will update and everything, but when it comes time to post it will say “Missed Schedule” and does not post at that date/time.
BUT if I press AUTO and then I EDIT IT AGAIN and click
Here are the exact steps. I have written several posts. I edit the posts as a DRAFT.
I then go back and update what needs to be posted and by using the ‘AUTO’ function in the plugin, it gives me a 1 day future post since my last scheduled one.
On that date, wordpress will not post the scheduled post. It will say Missed Schedule. When I go back to the post and basically UPDATE the date manually and try to see if it auto posts/schedule post. it works. But if I just use AUTO and update, it doesnt.
#18 by Ryan on May 23, 2011 - 8:15 pm
What version of WordPress are you using? All the plugin does is get a date and plug it into the same fields that you’d use to manually set a future date.
I’m thinking maybe WP 3.1 changed something on how that form works, although I haven’t looked yet. I was using 3.0.4 when I wrote this.
#19 by A User on May 27, 2011 - 5:50 pm
I suggest to add these options:
1) show the time to check that my time is the same of my website
2) automatically schedule all posts without need to remember anytime to click on AUTO button when publishing the post
3) show the list of scheduled posts in dashboard
4) if I click the auto button many times, then it skip days, so maybe it’s better to make it disappear one time that I clicked it?
#20 by Ryan on May 27, 2011 - 6:14 pm
Appreciate the suggestions, and I’ll see what I can do about ‘em.
1 – The time should show. All the plugin does to set the date / time is fill in the same fields that WordPress uses if you manually set the date and time.
2 – Actually started out that way but switched it to the way it is now so you can see what date and time before you publish. Plus it lets you decide whether you want to post date or not.
3 – WordPress already does this.
4 – Never tried that. I’ll have to check on it…
And being as the name you listed along with the website link were pretty obvious link drops, I edited them a bit. I don’t mind links to sites that are legitimate, but the site you linked to was obviously not.
#21 by Steve on June 2, 2011 - 4:24 pm
I’m using a plugin that automatically imports Youtube videos and their descriptions and then makes individual Drafts out of them.
Now I need a plugin that AUTOMATICALLY schedules those Drafts to publish at 1 per day for the next year at a random time each day so it looks like a human is publishing them.
Can your plugin do both of those things?
Thanks
#22 by Ryan on June 2, 2011 - 8:04 pm
Not automatically. You’d have to actually create the post and then use the auto link to schedule. It’d probably be easier for you to look at the code for this plugin and work out how to add the scheduling to the YouTube plugin you’re using.
#23 by Michael on October 3, 2011 - 7:42 am
Thank you for this creat plugin for wordpress.
I just installed it in wordpress 3.2.1 where it works without any problems.
I made some changes to the code so the scheduling is triggert right after the page to write a new post is loaded. That works quite well. But I’ve got the following problem when I try to edit the date an click Cancel:
http://screencast.com/t/DXdSKIWKV
After I click “Cancel” the automatically calucalted date isn’t present in the fields anymore.
Do you have a clue how to fix that?
Regards,
Michael
#24 by Graham on November 7, 2011 - 3:21 am
I want to use this plugin on a multisite is there any reason it should not work? I have it working on another single site and it works great installed and network activated but isnt showing up havnt tried a lot of things yet but if it isnt goin to work no point in trying
#25 by Ryan on January 14, 2012 - 8:47 am
Haven’t tried it on multisite, so I’m not sure. It may be there there’s either a different hook or different permissions.
#26 by Erik on January 6, 2012 - 10:36 pm
Hi Ryan,
I am back with a feature request.
Is it possible to add another button to “auto bump post to current date&time”.
Lets say i am modifying an old post, and i want to to appear as a new post on the top of my blog, i could of course manually set the date & time, but it would be cool with a button to automatically set date & time to the current time on the server, so it automatically gets bumped to the top.
Thanks again man.
#27 by Jon on January 14, 2012 - 7:29 am
Hi Ryan,
Not sure how to contact you but i want to expand on this plugin by adding a button called “bump” which means the script grabs the current server time & date and sets it as the current post date.
This means writers could easily bump their old articles to the current server date & time to make it appear on top of the blog.
I know it’s a weird feature considering you can just fill in the date & time manually, but i want this to be easy for my clients to do.
I can pay you for development if you could add it to this plugin, please contact me over email if you can do this.
Thank you for this great free plugin.
#28 by Ryan on January 14, 2012 - 8:47 am
Like the idea. I’ll see what I can do to get it working.
#29 by Kevin on February 2, 2012 - 10:05 am
Spent an hour or so searching for a plug-in like yours. I’m honestly surprised there are not more like it. Anyway, thanks for writing it. It looks like it meets my needs exactly.
#30 by Ryan on February 4, 2012 - 5:55 pm
Glad to hear it