Schedule Posts & Pages

You can schedule blog posts or site pages to automatically publish themselves at any time in the future.

In this guide

1. Scheduling
2. Changing Schedule Date
3. Backdating
4. Rescheduling
5. Un-scheduling
6. Troubleshooting

Scheduling

1. When you are ready to schedule your post or page, click on Post/ Page Settings in the sidebar of the post or page Editor.
2. Under Status & Visibility, click the hyperlinked Immediately next to Publish.
3. Select the date and time you want the post or page to publish.
4. Click Schedule to schedule your post or page.

If you have already scheduled a post, a dot will show up beneath that date on the calendar as shown in the image on the right.

If you don’t see Page/Post Settings, click on the settings icon next to Publish. This icon looks like a square with two uneven columns.

Scheduling a post or page

As soon as you set a future date or time, the Publish button will change to say Schedule.

If you click Publish before scheduling, you will have one more opportunity to schedule your post or page before publishing it.

Tips for using this calendar:

• Use the left/right arrows to change the month
• Change the year by moving your cursor over the year, then click on the arrows that appear
• Click on any day in the calendar to select it
• Adjust the time using the two inputs at the bottom
• Your site will post or page based on its time zone setting

📌

Scheduled posts will be triggered by the first visit to your blog on or after the exact date/time you set. If you see that the scheduled time has come and gone and your post or page has not published, log out of WordPress.com and view your blog’s front page. Your visit should cause the post or page to appear.

Changing Schedule Date

If you decide you want to change the scheduled date for a scheduled post or page, edit the post or page and click on Status & Visibility to change the Publish date.

Backdating

Sometimes you might want to backdate a post or page. For example, if you’ve just come back from a long trip, you might want to write a post or page for each day of your travels and have the post or page dates match the actual days you were away. To backdate a post or page, edit the date before you click Publish, as described above. In this case, the button will not change to Schedule.

Rescheduling

You can reschedule your post or page by editing the date and time the post or page was published, entering a future date and time, then clicking Schedule. When the scheduled time arrives, the post or page will jump from its current position in your timeline to the most recent spot on your blog and display the new date and time. The link for the post or page will also change to reflect the new publication date. When you reschedule a post or page, it will not redistribute to your email subscribers.

Un-scheduling

If you have scheduled a post or page to be published in the future but changed your mind and want to publish it immediately, edit your scheduled post or page.

Click on the scheduled date next to Publish in Page/ Post Settings. Change the date to today, which will change the button at the top from Schedule to Publish.

Troubleshooting

If your scheduled post or page does not appear, check the following:

• Is your timezone correct in your My Site → Settings → General page?
• Did you save your post or page as a draft rather than schedule it? You must click the Schedule button for the post or page to publish.
• Has no one visited your blog yet? Try logging out of WordPress.com and visiting your blog’s front page. This is required because scheduled posts use “cron jobs.” A cron job is an automated task that runs at a specified time or interval. This will only trigger on page load, so scheduled posts are published when the site is visited.
• If you have more than 100 scheduled posts, reduce that amount to less than 100. Only 100 scheduled posts are possible at a time.
• Is your post or page visibility set to Private?