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problems with scheduler

  1. dolcearia
    Member

    I'd appreciate any help. For MONTHS I've been having issues with the scheduler function making mistakes. Sometimes it ignores a saved draft, to post an earlier draft with a third of the content(I can't find even any autosaves for the missing information!). Sometimes it ignores the date I asked it to post and leaves it in the scheduled folder unpublished. And tonight it just ignored the scheduled date for TWO posts, and posted them immediately.

    My first instinct was to say "I'm doing this wrong, rushing my button pushing, etc. to cause it to use earlier information then the finished stuff" but this is happening FAR too often to be just me, and I've been doublechecking ALL of the information I input into it. Generally at least once a week, I have to look in my folders to make sure that there's nothing sitting in the scheduled folder, with an un-used publishing date of three weeks prior, and I have to doublecheck all my posts to make sure that it hasn't randomly deleted pictures, writing, etc.

    I think it's some sort of problem with the autosave, but I don't have the faintest clue. I've debated moving my site off of wordpress several times now because of this issue, except that I like my organization and layout here.

    I wish there was a way to just not use the scheduler.... just file unpublished but finished pieces in a special folder so that I could publish them at whim, without worrying about publishing unfinished pieces, or relying on the broken timer.

    I'm just tired of having my time and energy wasted trying to doublecheck whatever wordpress does, because of the frequency of these errors! It doesn't even notify me when things don't post!

    I really hope someone has had these problems too, or knows how to fix them. I feel like I'm going crazy, but it's just incredibly frustrating!

    The blog I need help with is thepaintedmask.wordpress.com.

  2. dolcearia
    Member

    Yep. It's broken. I just went to edit the date on an already scheduled post, to scoot it back two weeks to make up for the things that just posted......

    And it published it immediately.

    Anyone know what's going on with this? PLEASE say it's not just me! Now I'm really scared to edit or write anything, in case it posts it right away when I try to save it for later!

  3. dolcearia
    Member

    And now none of the reviews mistakenly posted are showing up ANYWHERE on the blog! Not on the main page, not in drafts, not in scheduled, not in posts....

    I REALLY don't want to have to redo all this writing, I'm seriously on the verge of throwing something!

  4. airodyssey
    Member

    Hi. Is the time zone setting correct for your blog? That's a major cause of scheduling disruptions. Go to Settings > General and verify if that's your current timezone.

  5. dolcearia
    Member

    The time zone is fine. The problem is with the date itself! Some things it NEVER publishes until I manually do it, and three different ones today were set for dates in january, and published immediately when I went to edit the draft. The date STILL reflected the proper info. It just didn't actually follow it.

    Thanks! I'd hoped it was something like that, but I thought I'd taken care of all of the easy fixes....

  6. airodyssey
    Member

    I'm tagging this for staff attention. If you don't get a response by January 3rd, contact them directly:
    http://en.support.wordpress.com/contact/

  7. dolcearia
    Member

    Thanks. I was hoping to be able to resolve it sooner, or at least find out if it was a common problem. I usually am happy to assume a certain amount of responsibility, if I'm just not doing things right.... but it seemed odd that I haven't heard of anyone else having these issues.

    Ah well, we tried!

  8. timethief
    Member

    @dolcearia
    Those who answer questions here are all Volunteers. We are your fellow bloggers. We do not have backend access to blogs and cannot help with technical issues like this scheduling bug. Only Staff can do that.

  9. raincoaster
    Member

    If you want to save some things to publish later, at will, just save them as Drafts. That will work perfectly. Some people have hundreds of drafts.

    I have heard of several people having these issues, as well as related issues. Report it to staff and they'll add it to the list.

  10. dolcearia
    Member

    Raincoaster-the problem is that I have unfinished drafts, and finished drafts, and I'd like to separate the two rather than using the bugged scheduler. I can't find any way to create folders to sort different styles of drafts into, the way I need to. Right now, I have around 30 drafts in progress, so it gets confusing trying to remember which ones are ready to post and which ones need work.

    I know everyone here is a volunteer---I'd just hoped someone would have know if this has happened to them, or if a lot of people have been posting questions on it, that I've missed. I can't imagine I'm the only one encountering this sort of bug.

  11. raincoaster
    Member

    Then the solution would be to use an offline blog editor and save the unfinished drafts on that.

    And yes, as I said, many people have been having these issues. Look in the forum sidebar for related tags and you can find dozens of threads.

  12. macmanx
    Happiness Engineer

    Hi,

    I was unable to duplicate this exact problem on my test blogs.

    One thing that I did that might be different, I always re-confirmed the schedule before re-saving the draft.

    If that doesn't work, can you please provide us with specific post titles and maybe some before and after screenshots?

  13. dolcearia
    Member

    Umm, I don't have links because they went dead and vanished COMPLETELY from any of the folders, but the three that this messed up recently were called Review: Blinc Kiss Me mascara , Review: Tokidoki Eyeshadow in Soya , and Review: Lashfusion XL. I don't have before/after screen-shots since it only happens irregularly. Sometimes it's fine, and then sometimes it starts doing it to EVERYTHING that I attempt to edit. I've confirmed dates/times for scheduling and watched it closely, but it doesn't seem to do much.

    If the problem was regular, I think I'd have a lot more information, but there've been numerous other posts that I didn't find out till a month later that it was still in my draft folder.

    I'd stop using the scheduler altogether, but I can't just type stuff into a word processor, since 3/4 of the effort in my pieces is in uploading, editing, inserting images or links, and formatting.

    I'm kind of hoping that maybe they'll randomly re-publish on the date they're SUPPOSED to, and magically appear again. I really don't know what to do from here, and I'd counted on being able to use my extra time in the next week or so to finish a month or so of posts. That isn't going to happen until support staff come back and can figure it out, or reassure me. I'm too afraid to lose more effort and since I'm writing about products I actually have to BUY, I can't budget myself to just write additional posts for any that are glitched, while I don't know if they'll be able to be recovered.

    Sigh. I've tried searching and even google only shows my post for this. I'd love to see posts from other people having this issue, if you have any links? I TRIED searching before I posted it, but I guess I'm using the wrong keywords?

  14. macmanx
    Happiness Engineer

    Fortunately, those posts aren't gone. :)

    They are nestled safely in the Trash section where they can be restored with a single click.

    Just go to the Posts section of your Dashboard and click the "Trash" link up top.

    From there, you can either restore or permanently delete the posts.

    Unfortunately, I haven't a clue how they wound up there. The system is suggesting that they were manually deleted by your user account.

    Just for the sake of pinpointing this, would you mind taking before and after screenshots every time you work with a post? If this happens again, you should wind up with a useful set.

    Also, not to sound too frightening, but someone else may have access to your account. I recommend changing your password ASAP.

  15. dolcearia
    Member

    They aren't in the trash folder though. I checked again just to be sure. There's not some secret trash folder I'm missing outside of the posts>trash folder?

    I'll change my password, and try to take the screenshots. I don't know how far I'll get, since I usually post two things a day, and usually handle at least four drafts. My poor computer is overwhelmed enough as is, and can barely find room for new media, which is already a bit crippling given the amount I handle for the blog!

    It doesn't display an error message or anything, and always reloads with the same "post updated" "post scheduled" or whatnot.... I only find that it's "posted" after I reload my dashboard, and it shows in the "Recent activity". If it doesn't post as scheduled, it still shows up in the scheduled folder, until after the appointed day, when it pops back into my "drafts" folder.
    I really hope I'm just missing the proper trash folder to find it.

  16. macmanx
    Happiness Engineer

    You're right, I'm terribly sorry about that. :(

    I was so hopeful to find something, I must have just confused myself.

    The post titles that you mentioned are in fact not in the Trash folder. To make matters worse, there is no record that they even existed.

    Just to clarify, is this regarding your http://thepaintedmask.wordpress.com/ blog?

  17. dolcearia
    Member

    Yep. That's the one. That was what worried me, that I couldn't even find autosaves, or entries in the trash!

  18. macmanx
    Happiness Engineer

    Unfortunately, without any sort of record in the system, it's like those posts never existed, which I've honestly never seen before. :(

    Changing your password was a good first step, just in case.

    If you wouldn't mind taking before and after screenshots everytime you publish or update a post, it would certainly provide us with some extra information if this ever happens again.

    I apologize for the inconvenience.

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