The More You Know: Scheduling WordPress Edition

This is for any of my co-workers that may be reading this thing and wondering why I’m spending all day writing on my website when I’m supposed to be working: The software I use to run this site, WordPress, has a full-fledged drafting and scheduling system. It is quite capable, as anyone who has used it knows. You can pre-write posts days, weeks, months, or even years ahead of time, and then schedule them to auto-post at any time and date you choose. Read on after the jump for more in the wacky world of WordPress scheduling and why this matters…

Most of the posts here I’ve written and re-written over the course of more than one day. A typical post, like this one from today on the Burning Jesus, I write up the night before (in my underwear down in my basement like any self-disrespecting blogger) and then schedule it for posting at some point the next day.

I do this for a few reasons, but the biggest ones are:

1. This gives me the opportunity to tweak the post the next day under the sober light of morning (or with new information that wasn’t available the night before). Occasionally, I’ll think better of something and cancel the post, or change it in some way as to not embarrass myself.
2. Most of my “hits” come from referrals from places like Twitter and Facebook. These are far more active during the workday than they are at night. Google Analytics made it quite clear almost immediately that if I post a piece at 2:38am (with a corresponding auto-teaser on Twitter), it gets far fewer hits total than it would have if I posted the same story the next day at some point during the day.
3. I can spread out my posts which helps drive repeat traffic throughout the day, rather than having all of my updates lumped together between midnight and 2am, as they would be naturally. For example, I had two main posts that went up today (the aforementioned Burning Jesus story, and the Congresscritter Douchebag one). I intentionally scheduled these to auto-post at two different times today for this reason (and it gave me time during lunch to take a few minutes to polish up the one about our friend from NC). I’m crafty like that.

I’ll also occasionally take a few minutes here or there during the day to post quick updates (like this one spurred by a warning from a friend), or sometimes I’ll eat lunch at my desk and work on it, just like everyone else here with Facebook or whatever sites they visit. But I do try to be a good little worker-bee and the vast majority of my “writing” is done on my own time at night. If you’re still skeptical? Just ask my wife about the time spent on the couch hunched over a computer screen only half-way paying attention to the world around me (and half-way is probably being generous). She’ll be happy to give you the full disclosure about that, I’m sure.