Building a Programmers Blog: Scheduled Posts

Sometimes you don't want all of your content to post at one time. Instead of a flurry of posts at the weekend, when you have time to write them, it's better for your site (and your readers) if new posts appear at regular and consistent intervals. Scheduling posts in advance can help you do this.

Key to this is the Scheduler module, which you should download from Drupal.org and install in the usual way.

Once installed and activated, go to Administer/Site Configuration/Scheduler module settings to confirm the setup of the module. The default options are probably going to suit you, so just press Save Configuration.

Next, you need to turn on scheduled publishing for each relevant content type. Note that doing this makes it possible to schedule publication of a given content type, it doesn't require that you do so. Go to Administer/Content Management/Content Types and edit a content type. Within the Workflow settings for that type, turn on both Enable scheduled (un)publishing and Alter published on time.

Now, when you go to write a new post, a new option will be available at the bottom of the post entry form:

Of course, your screen will almost certainly look different, unless you happen to have selected exactly the same theme choices as I.

Enter a specific date/time in the format specified to defer publication until that time arrives. You can even unpublish content if that is necessary. Note that the actual mechanism involves the operation of cron so you'll need to have poormanscron or similar active for it to work.

Once you've queued up some content, go to Administer / Content Management / Content / Scheduled to list and edit scheduled content.