Does anyone else find the post-dating feature of Wordpress especially useful? I regularly set posts to publish at a later time, and I think it’s a good way to exercise a greater level of control over the user experience and provide consistency to your readers.

On a standard Wordpress installation (I’m sure other CMS and publishing platforms support this too) the last item in your sidebar is “Post Timestamp.” By default, this is set to the time you opened the new post page. You can set it to whatever you’d like though. This is the time your post becomes active and visible to the outside world. You’re able to pick any time in the future or past. When you pick a time in the future, nobody can see it until it hits the time you specified. At that time, it appears as if you just wrote it. I rarely use this feature on this blog, but I use it quite a bit on tshirtreviewblog.com.

Here’s how I use post-dating to smooth out the experience for the end user.

Often times, when I’m browsing for new shirts to write about, I’ll come across two or three shirts that I’d like to mention, sometimes more. When I’m in that mode, and the creative juices are flowing, I find it best to knock out not just the first review (which can be posted immediately) but also the others. I could post three reviews in quick succession, but there are a few advantages to posting one a day for the next three days instead.

1. There’s a lesser chance that some articles may fall by the wayside
Content is the lifeblood of any site. It would make sense to milk every drop of audience out of each post. If I post reviews individually, with time in between, each one has its own moment in the sun. Posting a handful of reviews all at once can force them to share the podium so to speak, and compete for the readers attention. Since writing articles takes time, the farther you can go with the content you create, the more you’re able to stretch your time.

2. Erratic post schedules suck for readers
There’s nothing worse than going to a site that posts so much content one day I can barely wade through it all and then nothing for a couple days. I always feel like I’m missing the boat with sites like that.

3. The site can run itself for short periods of time
If I don’t feel like writing for a day or two, or if I’ve got a lot going on, it’s no big deal. Posts still can appear on a regular basis. You can also use this feature for planned time off or for vacations. It doesn’t work well for reactionary pieces or news sites of course, but for timeless content it’s doable.

4. It sets a rhythm for your readers
I write at all kinds of strange hours, but that doesn’t always line up with my readers schedules. If I see that a wave of readers tends to hit at 10 am, I’d like to make sure there’s some fresh meat waiting for them when they arrive. If the last chance I have to write is the evening before (I do work an 8 to 5) a non-timebomb post would sit overnight for the night owls to pick at, and becomes yesterday’s post. When the night owls get up the next day, there’s no content that’s new to them, and I have to write another post for that day.

Instead, it might be a good idea to knock out a small blurb (which takes a negligible amount of time) the night before, and timebomb your gem for 9 or so the next morning. That way, the post goes live with enough time for your readers’ RSS aggregators to update by the time the traffic wave hits.

Like most entries here, this arose out of something I encountered today. I was searching for some new shirts for tshirtreviewblog and came across several different sites I hadn’t seen before. By the time I realized what I was getting into, I’d found more than 10 shirts I was interesting in writing about. After setting aside a quick description and a URL for each, I got to work writing the actual reviews. I haven’t gotten through every one of them yet, but I plan to write the rest in a large block tomorrow. As an experiment, I will set them to time-release over the next week.

I don’t feel like writing all the time. Sometimes I have energy for writing, sometimes it’s for tweaking the code under the hood, sometimes for graphic design or site promotion. This timebomb feature saves me a lot of time, and keeps me interested and happy because I can always do what I’d like without feeling like writing is a chore.