Press "Publish", To Schedule A Post To Publish

People who setup a post for future publication, and who work on the post for hours or days, may overlook the final step in scheduling a post.

To create a scheduled post, there are 3 steps that are essential.

1. Create and edit content. (D'Ohh!).
2. Set "Schedule", with a future date / time selected.
3. Press "Publish".

If you spend hours or days repeatedly editing and Saving your changes, it's possible that the final step may elude you. And this may explain, to some folks, why their scheduled posts don't publish.

Even with the date and time set for future publishing, nothing happens until you actually "Publish".

You can do #1 and #2 in any order that pleases you.

• Some people may make setting future publishing the last task, after the final edit is made.
• Others immediately set date and time, when they start a new post.
• Most of us simply create and edit. Somewhere in the middle of the editing / saving process, when we decide that this post will be useful, we schedule the post - then keep applying final touches.

And there are always final touches, to be made.

Having completed the edits - and having set the publishing date / time long ago, and with date / time checked and verified - it may be too easy to overlook the final step. Instinctively, it seems like a post, with a publish date set, should publish, automatically.

I set it, long ago. Why didn't it go off??!!

If you don't hit "Publish", the post remains in Draft state. Even after "scheduled" date / time has come and gone, if you never hit "Publish", there the "Draft" post sits. In Draft state, with (by now) a past date / time.

If you finally hit "Publish", after agonising over the unpublished post which is now back dated, you get a normal published post, with the "scheduled" date / time as the actual "time stamp". If you never hit "Publish", the post sits there, patiently, waiting.

Forever.