How to Hack Publish Date of WordPress Post

Normally, as soon as we hit the publish button in WordPress, after completing the writing and formatting activities, the post goes live as it was scheduled to be published immediately. But sometime you may require to schedule the publish date of the post either back in time or schedule it to be published automatically at a future date. Here is how to change the publish date of a WordPress post.

With a simple trick, both the activities can be done i.e. publish it at a date back in time and schedule it for auto-publish at a future date. Yes we are talking about WordPress Time Machine…

All you need to do is to go to the publish box section in you EDIT POST screen and click on EDIT link just next to “Publish Immidiately”. A calendar will appear, as displayed in the image below. Here you can select a back date or a future date when you want to publish the post.

change publish date wordpress

If you select a back date, your post will be published and will carry the date which is selected. Accordingly, it will change its position in the archives section as well. If you display the Archives on your blog, you can notice the position changed.

If you select a future date, the post will not be automatically published, but will be scheduled to be published at the date selected. The post will automatically be published on the date and time mentioned. This is a very useful feature especially if you are going to a vacation and will not be able to publish for sometime. You can schedule your posts to be automatically published and make your users engaged till the time you return.

Do let me know if you face any issue with the functionality via the comments below.