Auto Schedule Posts

The Auto Schedule Posts plugin manages posting on a blog so that no matter how fast posts are added they only show up according to the auto schedule parameters. Blog owners can set the plugin to only post during certain hours, on certain days, and/or maintain a minimum time period between posts. Eventually I plan to have an option so that would enforce a posting schedule (such as only posting on the half hour) where a missed time holds all posts until the next scheduled time rather than simply ensuring a minimum time gap.

There is a priority setting when selecting posts to publish which only affects multi-author blogs – Selecting “Least Recent Author” creates something of a round robin when there are multiple posts ready for publication the author who has published the least recently is selected. The “Oldest Unpublished Post” setting simply chooses the first unpublished post (by post ID) that is ready for publication without regard to author.

Latest Version 1.0 (December 1, 2009)

After using this for quite some time I discovered one wrinkle to iron out – in version 0.9 the last published post time was not handled correctly so when updating options new posts could be published before the scheduled time. Now updating options will not open the gate for an extra post to be published.

22 Comments

  1. It was my best plugin in wordpress. But it doesn’t work for WP 3. If you fix it that would be great. Shalom!

  2. This is exactly what I am looking for. Would be great if you could upgrade it for latest version of WordPress. Thanks.

  3. Looks like a great plugin, just installed it then found out it’s not currently working with the newest version of wordpress, so i’m looking forward to your fix! 🙂

    James

  4. David

    I just wanted to check on the ETA of that upgrade. I just installed it on a clients site not realizing that it wasn’t compatible with WP 3.0

    Thanks

  5. I discovered this plugin a few weeks ago and it perfectly suits my needs !

    I really do hope you’ll update it from time to time, I find it so useful !

    (A few problems running it on WP 3.2.1. By example the “We should be open to publish now” doesn’t work quite well.)

  6. I just found a timezone bug… (version 2.2) and have a fix… The $tod calculation can wrap to a different day that is not expected when comparing with the $open and $close. my quick hack, add 3 lines and a var to the 4th:
    [around line 112]
    $open = mktime((double)$open[0],(double)$open[1]);
    $close = mktime((double)$close[0],(double)$close[1]);
    $bump = 0;
    if ( (date(“H”) + get_option(‘gmt_offset’)) > 23 ) $bump = -24;
    if ( (date(“H”) + get_option(‘gmt_offset’)) < 0 ) $bump = 24;
    $tod = mktime(date(“H”) + get_option(‘gmt_offset’ + $bump),date(“i”));

    Same change around line 293 for the admin page.

    Also, the plugin homepage is broken… asks for an admin login.

    Thanks for the great plugin!
    Chris.

    • Thanks for that fix Chris. That probably explains the inconsistencies I have seen from time to time in the timezone calculations. I hadn’t been able to isolate the cause. I’ll get that into a new version as soon as I can.

      As for the plugin homepage – that was a remnant of a site migration. You should be able to see it without a login now.

  7. Great plug-in now with Chris Bells excellent fix, its cooking! to propel this plugin to the next level suggestion, if you could include a randomise post time ie you say want around 10 posts in a day and these are posted at random times would be great ie a humanising of it, easy, hard, next update? 😉 even taking it further that it randomises how many a day (between parameters you can set) so monday the plugin decides to post 6 at random times, 9 on tues at random times (so it decides when and how many) you just set the boundaries the plugin works out the detail (no restriction also, so you could set the per day higher if needed)

    • Tony,

      I think the next fix is for me to add Chris’ fix into an official release. As for random posting: that was something I wanted to do when I first began development but it proved to be very difficult. I have an idea of how to implement it but it would not be as robust as what you are suggesting – letting users set a range for how many posts to publish. I think what I would be able to do is allow users to specify a target number to seed the random function so that the intervals would be random and the higher the seed the more posts would likely be published in a given day.

      I’ll have to see if I have time to do that and get it deployed publicly.

  8. Hi, is the auto post scheduler still maintained?

    As Im trying to use it but I get the following:

    Auto-Schedule Posts Options
    Help and Instructions
    Now: 2023-05-03 21:40:39
    Next: 2023-05-03 21:45:00
    There has been a critical error on this website. Please check your site admin email inbox for instructions.

    Learn more about troubleshooting WordPress.

    Can you help?

    • I have not done anything with that plugin for a while. I’d have to check if it is still working with newer versions of WordPress. What version are you running?

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