Here's one possible solution from many..
- If user makes a post, he/she saves it as draft
- User selects a datetime when he/she wants to publish it
- It's saved as post metadata,
my_post_schedule_time in my example
Disclaimer: this is just an example. It should work perfectly but it will probably require some tweaking, tuning, customization and maybe even some optimization.
I guess I don't have to tell you that impact on server depends how many posts you have.
This code would go to a new single .php file and you should put it to mu-plugins or plugins folder.
/*
* Plugin Name: Your Scheduler
* Plugin URI: http://www.your-site.com
* Description: Schedules posts for users
* Author: You
* Author URI: http://www.your-site.com
*/
// Change status
add_action( 'wp_ajax_nopriv_postSchedule', function() {
// Get current time
$now = date( 'Y-m-d H:i:s' );
// Get posts that has status "draft" and are "over time limit"
$unpublished_posts = new WP_Query( array(
'posts_per_page' => -1,
'post_type' => 'post', // Your post type
'post_status' => 'draft', // Post status
// Im pretty sure that it doesn't get posts without that meta value
'meta_query' => array(
array(
'key' => 'my_post_schedule_time',
'value' => $now,
'type' => 'DATETIME',
'compare' => '<=',
)
)
));
// Loop through all scheduled posts
while( $unpublished_posts->have_posts() ) {
$unpublished_posts->the_post();
// Get schedule meta data
$post_publish_time = get_post_meta( get_the_ID(), 'my_post_schedule_time', true );
// Format it
$format_post_publish_time = date( 'Y-m-d H:i:s', strtotime( $post_publish_time ) );
// Check if we have schedule time, just in case
if( ! empty( $format_post_publish_time ) ) {
// Check if that times has passed a.k.a smaller than current time
if( $format_post_publish_time < $now ) {
// Publish post
wp_update_post( array( 'ID' => get_the_ID(), 'post_status' => 'publish' ) );
}
}
}
wp_reset_postdata();
});
Now you would need to set server cron job from your host cPanel that calls that function in your set interval (e.g in every 1 hour, in every 2 hours, once per day etc). More often == more precise.
