Tuesday 3 June 2008

Coffee Breaks Just Got Easier To Manage

For those who haven't yet picked it up, Blogger recently announced a new feature: scheduled posting. They say:
Have you ever wanted to announce something on a certain date but knew you wouldn’t be at a computer to make a post? Or you wanted to keep posting regularly but knew you’d be on vacation for a few weeks? Scheduled post publishing is here to help you out.

Scheduling a post is easy to do: on the post editor page, click the “Post Options” toggle to show the “Post date and time” fields. Then, type a post date and time that’s in the future. When you click the “Publish” button, your post will become “scheduled.” When the date and time of the post arrive, it will be automatically published to your blog.
More information here. The only thing to watch for is that they don't schedule posts that have already been published, so if you accidentally click the 'Publish' button before changing the date and time, or (as I did last week) mistakenly schedule a post for an earlier date and time than the present, then the only thing you can do is republish as a draft and go back to Blogger to change it to a published post when you want it to appear.

But generally I think this is a very useful feature. It will certainly make blogging much easier for me, as I can post every Monday morning regardless of whether I'm out on a funeral, having a lie-in, taking the day off or away on holiday - which will also be very helpful in terms of covering my tracks. And I know it will be great when it's my turn to do the 'coffee break' posts, as I won't have to remember to show up first thing on a Friday morning. So I thought I'd mention it here, as I suspect it will also be useful for other 'coffee break' posters who might, oh I don't know, just to take a random example, go into labour when it's their turn to post!

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

I would suggest that people also check their time zone settings on each of the blogs that they are an administrator for, if we're going to seriously use this new feature. This is something I accidentally missed when I first started using blogger.

Customise -> Settings -> Formatting -> Time Zone...

Apologies if I'm preaching to the choir.

CL Taylor said...

That's really useful, thanks Zinnia. I've always been a bit jealous of other blogs (wordpress?) that can schedule posts. I'll find it particularly useful once my coffee morning turn comes around again as I don't seem to get up as early as everyone else!

CC Devine said...

A great idea. Very helpful indeed.

Anonymous said...

It is a good idea. I found it a couple of weeks ago when I put the wrong date in the post option. Thanks for the tip.

CJ xx

B.E. Sanderson said...

Excellent! I've been wondering when they were going to get off their buns and get that function done. Thanks for the heads-up, Zinnia.

Rose Red Art said...

Fantastic idea! Thanks for bringing this to everyone's attention!

Anonymous said...

Yes, v. useful. Indeed I've already used it, as a result of Zinnia drawing my attention to it!

NoviceNovelist said...

Thanks Zinnia - the explanations are really simple too (she says with her fingers tightly crossed!!!!)

Liane Spicer said...

I discovered the feature by accident then wondered what was happening when I tried to change the date and it wouldn't reschedule. Now I understand! Once posted never rescheduled! Thanks, Zinnia.

As for the time zone differences... I had to get up at one AM to do my Coffee Morning posts since I'm five (or is it eight?) hours behind the UK. Thanks Captain for showing the way around that as well.

Flowerpot said...

isn't technology wonderful?!