Since Wordpress 2.5, I could never get posts to publish articles at a scheduled timeframe. For whatever reason, all posts would just miss the schedule and not show up on the blog. For a few months, I had to manually change the time to get the posts to show up (or just write posts and immediately schedule them to go out).

I’m happy to say that after months of research and frustration, I finally found the solution to the Wordpress scheduled post problem!

Here’s a brief explanation of the issue I was having:

• When it came time to publish the scheduled posts in WP, the post wouldn’t publish and time would start counting backwards (for example, if it’s 2 minutes past the published time, it will say “2 minutes to post”
• Researching it seems to indicate that it was related to wp-cron.php

Solution to the Scheduled Post Issue

The way WP handles scheduling is that whenever a page is loaded (either from your blog or in your control panel), the file wp-cron.php is loaded.  So, in order to troubleshoot the scheduling issue, log in to your server’s temrinal (via SSH or others) and type

wget http://yourdomain.com/wp-cron.php

Obviously, you need to replace yourdomain.com with your own domain (in fact, you need to use the actual URL of where your wp-cron.php is located).  For example, if your blog is within a sub directory called “blog”, it will be at yourdomain.com/blog/wp-cron.php.

If everything is normal, you should see an “OK” message buried under a bunch of other junk.  If you get a 404 error or others, then that’s the first problem you should solve.

The most common problem for many server configuration is the 404 error, so here is a quick way to get this fixed.

1. Open your /etc/hosts file (this is a text file so use a text editor to open it)
2. Look within the file to see if your domain is pointing to a different IP than it should be (mine was pointing to 127.0.0.1)
3. Change the wrong IP in the etc/hosts file to your domain’s public IP address
4. type the wget code again to see if you get an OK.  If it does, you should be able to schedule your posts from now on!

If you get a write permission error, then you need to make sure wp-cron.php is writtable.

This solution only works if you have terminal access to your server.  If you are using a shared hosting where many of the steps isn’t possible, use this information to talk to your host about the scheduling problem.  They should be able to fix it for you based on this article!

Like everyone else, I changed the permalink of my articles to reflect the title of my posts for SEO reasons. In the newer versions of Wordpress, the editor automatically updates and shows you the URL as soon as you leave the editable box (as shown below).

Unfortunately, I found this super annoying because I often change the title (sometimes I even leave the title blank until after I finish writing the article) and the permalink doesn’t update! So if I ever change the title after I start my article, I have to click on edit and then type in the url myself.

In fact, I spoke to the Wordpress team at Blog World Expo and the lady there thought it was a good idea to add a reload button beside that url to reset it to the title (she did say she had to think about it but I was hoping that it will be in v2.7).

Today, I accidentally found the cure for this. I was so happy I found it because I will finally be able to get rid of this annoying “feature”.

To reset the permalink url to the current title, all you have to do is:

1. click “edit” to bring up the editable url.
2. Erase the url (the part where you can change)
3. click save

Saving a blank url seems to trick wordpress into generating a new url based on the current title.  Ha!  Finally, I’m happy again.

One of the secrets I accidentally found was that I write much better if I turn off the internet when I write blog articles.  They turn out more complete, better structured and flow much better.

I used to write all my blog articles through the wordpress editor (which is a great editor btw), but while traveling for business one day, I decided to start writing on the plane.  Even though it gets noisy at times and sometimes your neighbor likes to look at what you are typing, I find that I’m much better able to concentrate and get into a groove while I type away on my keyboard.

Why is That?

Curious about why that is, I spend some time thinking about it and here are some reasons that I came up with.

Distractions
With instant messaging, skype, emails and twitterfeed all turned on, it is very hard to concentrate with so many little things popping up on the desktop.  When I was on the plane, none of these would bother me because I didn’t have access to the internet.

Alternatives
When I’m on the plane, I open Microsoft Word and that’s the only thing on the screen.  Since I’m extremely bored and there’s nothing else to do, I end up typing on the screen and not trying to compare writing blog articles with something else that I could be doing during the same time.

There is No Rush
When I’m on a 5 hour plane ride, I’m stuck in the chair for a long time.  Unless there is a TV in front of me, there is really not much to do.  When I start writing on my article, there is absolutely no sense of rush.  I know I have a ton of time to finish the article so I take my time to gather my thoughts and just write.  I noticed that taking my time ends up making me more efficient and produces a better article in a shorter amount of time!

Try It

Since I’m not always on the plane, I started to turn off my internet connection while I write. For those that get many phone calls, I would even turn off your cell phone. This way, you can enjoy writing your article without interruption and I’m sure the quality (and quantity) of your articles will increase dramatically! All you need to do is try it and you will realize the difference!

If you are like me, you are constantly loading up your blog and checking to see if it still runs smoothly.  In fact, I have my blogs set as my browser’s home page so whenever I load up Firefox, they show up in front of me.  Some people would find this excessive and annoying but for me, it works and here’s why.

Yesterday, I found MoneyNing and OC Golf Course taking over a minute to load while my other blogs were running fine.  It didn’t occur to me that it wouldn’t be the hosting company’s fault because all my blogs are on the same server, so I called my hosting company immediately.

To my surprised, tech support picked up my call instantly so I explained the situation to him.  He quickly looked into the problem and basically told me that it might be the problem with some of the wordpress plugins that I’m running because certain sites are running fine while others are not.  I was not happy about this but after thinking about it for a little bit, I realize that they are probably right.  I just have to figure this out myself.

I look through the list of plugins in my wordpress admin area instantly stopped when I got to the SezWho plugin.  It was only days since I installed this plugin and the only two blogs that have this was the two that are running terribly slow!  I deactivated it and sure enough, it was running smoothly again. Problem solved, and a few hours of down time saved because I was on top my blogs.

Another incident happened today (what a weekend) where only half of the page on the same two blogs would load properly.  Looking at the bottom toolbar, it showed “Connecting to entrecard.s3.amazonaws.com”. Entrecard related again I thought. I took the code for my Entrecard out on MoneyNing and again, it worked like a charm. As an experiment of what the effects would be since OC Golf Course is still new and doesn’t get a ton of traffic, I left the widget on and continued to let the blog be handicapped until Entrecard (or really Amazon Web Services) fixes the problem.

Here’s a chart and what I found:

As you can see, I got 11 visitors in the 7 hours window that the Entrecard service was down today when the site gets around 300 visitors a day (12-13 on average per hour). If anything, the same period should be the busiest period so as a result, I am forecasting about 1/3 of traffic lost for today which includes all potential earnings lost. Luckily I found out as soon as it went down because it would be a much bigger problem for me if it was one of my bigger sites.

Moral of the story? Monitor your blogs or else you are leaving money on the table.