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Future Posts Released Before Timestamp Time

  1. lorelle
    Member

    Several weeks of future posts have just released on my blog. I've alerted the developers, but wanted to let others know that this is a known issue and hopefully something will be done to resolve it soon.

    If your blog posts set to publish on your blog in the future have released, here are your choices.

    1. Do nothing. They are already in your feeds, have sent out trackbacks and pings, and search engines may have already indexed the information. Not much more you can tell people.
    2. Tell your readers this is an error and that it is being looked at. Until we know how WordPress.com is going to resolve this issue, which might include pulling the articles back into the post queue and out of the public eye until their timestamp arrives properly, it will serve to warn readers if the posts disappear.
    3. Put the posts in draft status. Edit the posts and change their status to draft. This will remove them from the public view, but the pings and trackbacks cannot be "turned off" or removed.

    If you, like me, use the future posts feature to schedule posts ahead of time so you can work on other projects, and you don't have the time to write new posts, just let them sit there or write a note for your readers explaining the situation and tell them not to expect anything new while you work on other projects. They are usually understanding.

    Hopefully, this will be resolved soon.

  2. isadora
    Member

    Thanks a lot for the information, lorelle, this seems to be an issue since one or two days.

  3. lorelle
    Member

    Is there another post on the forum about the issue? It just hit my blog today. Thanks for letting me know.

    Also, as a follow-up to my "tips", any post you publish "now" to let your readers know of the problem will be seen in chronological order down the list of posts. Trust them to find it - but don't give into the temptation to change the date to a future date. It might not publish. :D

  4. lorelle
    Member

    Another note, if you edit the post, saving it puts it back in the schedule, which is painful for those who have already commented on the post. You can change the date so it is visible again, or just leave it.

  5. ninglun
    Member

    Thanks for raising this issue, Lorelle. I have from time to time noticed that the future posts facility can be erratic, and that has been going on for several months. However, I do not use it all that often, so I haven't complained here. I have found that sending a post back to draft and adjusting the date stamp even by a minute can correct the matter, even if too late for pings etc.

  6. barry
    Staff

    Lorelle,

    This was a bug created and fixed today. Sorry for the trouble.

  7. isadora
    Member

    Not in the forum, lorelle, two comments on my blog on a post describing how to use this functionality. Thanks lorelle and barry!

  8. lloydbudd
    Member

    A server needed to be rebooted and it had a bad battery. On reboot its time was somehow in the future, and that caused the issue. You were a big help in helping us work out the previous issues with future posting, and as you say "hasn’t been seen for well over a year", so for you and everyone else it was very important we give you even more protection from this type of issue.

    Hailin has found and implemented #5801 safety measure for cron to publish future post and with Matt and Barry's assistance an additional safeguards in place, where on future posting the server will check to see if it has the same time as another server, and only publish if both clocks are the same. If the clocks are not the same, then it will notify our sys admin team.

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