It’s easy to schedule a WordPress post.
This means, you can write your posts ahead of time. It makes planning easier, and you can use your time more efficiently.
If you’re traveling, you can schedule posts to go live at a predetermined time, even if you’re nowhere near a computer or an internet connection at that moment.
Best of all, scheduling your posts is as easy as 1-2-3.
#1. Write your post
Write your post just the way you normally do. Need a refresher?
#2. Save Draft
In the menu in the upper right area of your Dashboard, click the Save Draft button.
#3. Schedule
When you click the Publish button, a checklist opens up to let you double-check on everything before you go live.
If you want to publish right away, just click the Publish button again. But, if you want to schedule the post for future publication, you have another step.
Click on the line that says Publish: Immediately to open up the scheduling dialog.
Choose the date and time you want your post to go live online.
One nice thing about this process is, if you scroll down, you’ll see suggestion(s) for steps you might have overlooked. In this example, I have not yet added any tags to the post, and the scheduler lets me know.
I can add my tags directly from this view. When I’m done, I simply scroll back up and click the Publish button again.
After I do that, the button now reads Schedule. I click it, and voilá! My post will automagically appear for my readers on the date and time I specified.
Notice that the menu now tells you the date and time that you’ve scheduled, and the button at the bottom now says Schedule instead of Publish.
That’s it — you’re done! Your post will magically appear on the date and time you told WordPress to schedule it, and WordPress shows you a confirmation message.
Hint: Schedule Social Media Posts Ahead, Too!
Once you’ve scheduled your WordPress post, you can plan and schedule social media posts, too. This is easy if you’re using a tool like HootSuite or Buffer. Better still, use CoSchedule (my hands-down favorite editorial calendar for WordPress), to automate that process within your post editing screen.
When you take advantage of post and social media scheduling, you’ll save yourself huge amounts of time, and give yourself the piece of mind of knowing that your WordPress and social posts will publish on time, even if you’re busy doing other things.
This article was updated on June 18, 2019.
