In this Drupal modules review post series I will demonstrate how one (perhaps) you can schedule Drupal posts (nodes) by using a little and neat module: Scheduler
Drupal out of box doesn't offer such functionality (Frankly speaking I would love to see that in Drupal core, because have seen this for WordPress CMS already some 8 years ago).
I believe a scheduling feature is a must have for many pro-blogger's, semi-pro blogger's and even amateur blogger's.
The reason I'm using scheduled posts function is simple - Already for last 18 months I'm publishing at least one article per day (holidays including). The things is - though I have managed to keep up with my goal to publish an article everyday, I doubt I would reach my goal without using this useful cheat.
At my first blogging days I created a cheat called upcoming posts by using a very simple technique - by changing nodes publish article in future date and time:
Changing Drupal nodes publishing time
Now this was a simple workaround to handle my scheduling calendar, but it comes with a few cons:
- Those articles with publishing date set in future still is accessible if manually entering URL path
- they are still passed to your xml sitemap (if you are using it)
- they are all being indexed by search engines like Google (and showing up in SERP)
Not to mention they will be displayed on your sites frontpage if you are not using Drupal views to filter out those future posts.
You can read my tutorial have I built an upcoming posts feature by using this simple approach (it still has all the cons I described above)
Now - I was looking for ways to avoid those cons and first my first idea was to use Drupal Rules and add some time based conditions, though I believe it's possible to do it Rules way, I wanted something without a learning curve and then I found this module called Scheduler:
What does exactly what it says it does - it schedules your Drupal nodes
About Scheduler:
This module allows nodes to be published and unpublished on specified dates.
Dates can be entered either as plain text or with calendar popups. To use calendar popups you need to install the Date Popup module, which is part of the Date module.
Enabling Scheduler Module
Download, install and enable Scheduler module. You can make some configurations on admin/config/content/scheduler page, I leaved them intact.
Next head to your content type admin page and enable scheduler for all your content types you wish for:
How to enable Scheduler on Content Type
Basically that's all - you have successfully enabled a scheduling feature for your Drupal site. You can access you scheduled content via admin/config/content/scheduler/list or you can build a simple upcoming posts page using Drupal views.
Please feel free to leave comment or contact me if you have any questions regarding Drupal Scheduler or other Drupal related task.
P.S. This post was originally created on March 10, 2015 and scheduled for publish using above mentioned functionality on April 14, 2015
Upcoming post page
