Here is a really easy way to have completed posts get published at a future date. Also, how to check what is scheduled to be posted, and when it will be posted.

When I first started blogging, I posted like crazy for about 2 weeks, and then noting for months. Now, I try to post something every day, or almost every day, this way I can just stay in the habit.

The problem that I run into is that sometimes I might fire off 3 or 4 posts in one day, and then after that, I may work on a more involved post for several days. When I was still using Blogger, what I would do is just save the extra posts as drafts, and then publish them on the day that I didn’t have anything else.
The problem with this is that I would forget to publish them. WordPress makes it incredibly easy to automate this task.

Scheduling a post to be published on a future data and time
Note: This works a lot better if your time zone settings in WordPress are set up correctly.

Step 1: Write, edit and otherwise prepare your post. Whatever you do that makes your writing magical, do it now. Just make sure you are happy with the post, because you may not see it again until it hits the front page.

Step 2: If you are using a 3rd party editor, save the post to your blog as a draft. If you are editing it in WordPress, click “save and continue editing”.

Step 3: In the right hand column, expand “time stamp” and change it to the date that you want to post to appear. Once you have changed the time andor date, the “Edit time stamp” box should check itself (before it wrecks itself).

Step 4: Click the Publish Button.
Yea, that’s it. Now the post will show up on the front page at the time you specified.

Checking to see what is scheduled to be posted, and when
Now that you have scheduled your blogs next 3 months of posts, I’m sure that you would like to know how to see when things are going to be posted. Here are two ways to do it.

The first method: Just go into the site’s administration, and click on “Manage”. Anything with a date in the future, which is not also listed in your “drafts” section at the top of this page, is going to be posted on the date listed. In the picture below, all of the posts in the red box will be posted at the date listed.

The second method: This one is a little harder to figure out when they are being posted, but you won’t get confused with posts that are drafts.

Once you get into site administration, click on “Dashboard” if it isn’t already highlighted. In the “Latest Activity” box, there will be a section titled “Scheduled Entries”. This will list the post title, and the amount of time (roughly) before it is posted. In the picture below, you can see that I have 3 posts scheduled to be posted.

Now, the next tip is how to link to WordPress blog posts that are scheduled to be published.

Posted in Tips, Blogging, WordPress 3 Comments »

I sat there in shock, a line of drool running from my mouth, and onto the keyboard. My eyes rolled into the back of my head, and I could hear the masses of the internet calling out my name in tribute. “Mike Scott, Mike Scott”, they chanted.

After weeks of hard work, it had finally paid off.

Well, maybe a week of hard work, but I did have that vacation right after I started the blog.

OK, so the posts so far haven’t been long and thoughtful, nor full of inflection and insight.

Enough of that, I did do some work on the blog. I mean, come on! Do you think these posts write themselves. Do you think I have a million monkeys typing in a room for eternity? Hell no!

I had a dozen monkeys with typewriters in a room for 4 hours (that’s all I could afford). Anyway that didn’t work out because the OCR software was horrible.

I must be doing something right, after all, I’m number-mother-grabbin-1! John Chow and Engadget can eat my shorts! Boing Boing, Gizmodo and TechCrunch will be forced to envy me as I sit high on my throne.

Anyway, I ran out to the mailbox to see if it was full of AdSense checks, and after I stopped crying when I saw that it wasn’t, I was hit with a realization. I don’t even have a banner up on the site yet.

I started to get suspicious.

Then I looked a little closer, and I realized that my Authority was 3. Hmm…

For some reason there was something wrong with Technorati’s site at about 2PM MST Saturday, and they were showing every blog, or at least all of the ones I found, as being #1, with the “top 100″ logo next to the rank.

I didn’t fake these pictures, they really are screen shots. I thought some of my favorite blogs might appreciate hanging onto them. I put mine in a Solid Gold picture frame, and placed it on my “I love me” wall.

Here is Incoherent Mumbling (Art’s Blog). For some reason it never generated the preview of your site.

Ghosts in the Machine’s Screen shot

Necessary Skills‘ Screen Shot

and even my old, abandoned, lonely, “red headed step child” of a blog, The Bit Bucket.

I apologize for the strange picture formatting. I tried to fix it, I even messed around with the HTML and the images, but WordPress just doesn’t seem to like it. I gave up after I finally had it this way.

Posted in Bugs, Odd, Blogging 2 Comments »

I posted yesterday about Bust a Name, and as I mentioned, I hadn’t heard of Bust a Name when I decided on my domain name. So, I have a little confession to make.

Truth is, I used the Web 2.0 Domain Name Generator. I was hesitant to to admit this, because I don’t want anyone to think that I am a Web 2.0 kind of guy. I mean really, Web 2.0 was sooo last week.

Truth be told, I noticed that they mixed up words and numbers, and I started thinking about the port numbers. So technically, the generator didn’t give me my domain name, it just started me down the path.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Posted in Blogging, Web Tools, Domain Names, WebSites, Distractions No Comments »

I mentioned in the very first post on this blog that I had a lot of trouble finding a good domain name. Now, not even one month later, I find out about Bust a Name. I sure wish I had known about them way back when!

Thanks to Wil Harris for pointing it out. I know Wil, Kevin Rose posted about it first, but you didn’t include a link to his post, and anyway, I don’t read Kevin’s Blog. I have enough trouble keeping up with my current feeds.

Posted in Blogging, Web Tools, Domain Names, WebSites 3 Comments »

John Chow talks about his biggest affiliate earners - Man, I sure would like to pull in $12K a month! You have to love the guy, his contests are basically “Google Bombs for Hire”, and they boost his pagerank, all while someone else is paying for the prize that is being given away. So he earns money, and Google juice at the same time. What a gig. You can see the total breakdown in his July 2007 Earnings Report.

Review of The “4 hour work week” - John Chow reviews the book. Pretty interesting.

Over at Daily Blog Tips, there Daniel posted an article about how he had some trouble fighting a Splog that was ripping off his content. I was kind of surprised when I read, right at the top of the post, that a WebMaster World study said that 77% of all blogger blogs were spam blogs. That isn’t even the worst ones, check out the other sites hosting mostly Splogs.

Over at Daily Blog tips they explain how to back up your WordPress Blog, and mention a plug-in if you don’t have phpmyadmin.

Finally, get more stats then you could ever want about your blog at iBlogStats. eMomsatHome mentioned it in a link love post. Thanks Wendy.

Posted in Blogging, LinkLove 2 Comments »