How Does Wordpress Scheduled Posting Technically Work?

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This has always puzzled me... How does Wordpress (the self hosted ones) manage to auto post the scheduled posts all by itself when there's no cron job that's always running? Does the blog software communicate to a remote server like Wordpress.com of some sorts intermittently? Or does it just post the scheduled post when somebody visits the blog hence running the script :confused:
#programming #posting #scheduled #technically #wordpress #work
  • I think its probably generated on the fly when someone visits the blog, or any page on the site including the admin panel.
    Pretty clever way of doing it really.
  • Possibly something in the php that is triggered when a certain time/day is reached

    Not sure, but a really good question!!
  • If I'm not mistaken, I think that it just pulls the posts based on the server date. If you schedule something in the future, it won't get pulled and displayed until that date/time.

    The one part that I don't know is how it triggers pings/etc for the post at the correct time. If someone knows, clue us in!
  • Nothing special.
    Your post contains publishing date.
    eg. Post A = 2009-01-06, Post B = 2009-01-05
    The script just fetch from database which posts are older or the same publishing date as today.
    So, if you visit the site today, 2009-01-05. Only Post B will be shown up.
    When you visit tomorrow, both Post A and B come up.
    Just a typical dynamic pages.

    If scheduled post can trigger Ping, that would be interesting.
  • It's all handled internally with the script, the posting and the pinging functions.

    I believe it is acting off the server info, date and time.

    Thanks,

    John
  • Hmmm.. if that's the case then scheduled post is not "real time".
    So is it safe to assume that scheduled posts are not pinged?
  • As I understand it to work, if it posts, it pings.

    I schedule posts on quite a few blogs and it works like it should.

    Thanks,

    John
  • I don't see how can it ping all by itself since the scheduled posts will only appear depending on the time the user viewed the blog. What if no user viewed the blog, then pinging will have never happened right?
  • I see... anyway I've done my research and all of them are quite conflicting but one thing is common among what I've read: If no user ever visit the site then no posting/pinging will occur, therefore the Wordpress scheduled post is not really "real time".
    • [1] reply
    • I think the reason the other person was concerned about pinging wasd to have the spiders come at what ever time the post is ment to go live. So that it generates traffic.

      Now some one suggested using a script on a your computer to load up a browser. Probable not handiest thing to happen. If you have your own server with cron capabilities and some scripting language such as PHP. You could set it up so that it loaded/accessed the script on the wordpress blog/s every hour or half hour. That would load trigger the post to happen. If you had more than wordpress blog and even blogspot. You could probable have script tell pingomatic/technorati or what ever to visit the about an update to the site.

      When ever you add a new blog added it to a database and how often you would want it to get pinged. I would image new blog you would only want it to happen on occasion.
  • If you're really concerned about having your post pinged at the correct time, then just set up a scheduled task on your PC to open a browser window with that URL at the specified time.
    • [1] reply
    • Jeff, thank you for the info, we had the same question.
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    How Does Wordpress Scheduled Posting Technically Work?

    This has always puzzled me... How does Wordpress (the self hosted ones) manage to auto post the scheduled posts all by itself when there's no cron job that's always running? Does the blog software communicate to a remote server like Wordpress.com of some sorts intermittently? Or does it just post the scheduled post when somebody visits the blog hence running the script :confused: