Schedule posts and auto-schedule

The Calendar shows every post that is scheduled or already published, day by day, and the posts still waiting for a date. From there you can schedule a post yourself, move it, take it off the calendar, or let auto-schedule fill your week for you. Scheduling never costs credits.

Schedule a post yourself

1. Open the Calendar from the menu.
2. Click Schedule a post at the top, or Schedule on a post in Ready to schedule on the right (below the calendar on a phone).
3. Pick the day and time. Times are in your own time zone, and must be in the future.
4. Click Schedule. The post appears on that day. It goes out on its own at that time; you don't need to be online.

You can also drag a post from Ready to schedule onto a day. A post dropped on a day goes out at 09:00 that day, or at the time it already had.

Ready to schedule lists your drafts and the posts you've marked Ready to publish, until they have a date. If it's empty, open a draft in Posts or write a new one from Ideas.

A post with fact-check flags can't be scheduled until they're resolved. See Reading fact-check flags.

Move or unschedule a post

• To move it, click Reschedule on the post, pick a new time and click Schedule. Or drag it to another day: it keeps its time of day.
• To take it off the calendar, click Reschedule, then Unschedule. The post goes back to your drafts. On WordPress and Ghost, where the post already waits on your site as a scheduled post, Blog AI switches it back to a draft there too. If your site keeps the post scheduled, Blog AI tells you and leaves it scheduled: unschedule it on your site, or move it instead.

A post that is being published at that moment can't be moved.

Mark a post ready to publish

On a draft's page, click Mark ready to publish in the Publishing panel. Its status changes to Ready to publish. That's how you tell Blog AI a post is finished: auto-schedule only ever picks up posts marked ready, never plain drafts.

To take a post back out of the queue, set its Status back to Draft.

Auto-schedule

Auto-schedule places each post you mark ready in your next free slot, so a steady flow of posts goes out without you picking dates.

To turn it on:

1. On the Calendar, click Set up in the Auto-schedule panel.
2. Tick Auto-schedule posts I mark ready, then pick the days of the week and a time of day.
3. Choose how many posts a week, from 1 to 7.
4. Click Save. Blog AI fills your free slots straight away and tells you how many posts it scheduled.

How it decides:

• Only posts marked Ready to publish, oldest first. Drafts and posts with fact-check flags are left alone.
• A mix of topics. Two posts on the same part of your business (the same category or idea area) aren't put back to back when another ready post could go in between. This only changes the order: it never holds a post back.
• Never in the past, and one post a day at most: a day that already has a post going out is skipped.
• Never more than your weekly number. Posts you scheduled yourself, and posts already published that week, count toward it.
• Your time zone. The time is your local time, taken from your browser when you save, and it stays the same when the clocks change.
• Up to eight weeks ahead. Posts beyond that wait, and are placed as slots open up.

It runs when you save the settings, each time you mark a post ready, and once a day to catch up. Fill my calendar now runs it straight away.

Posts placed by auto-schedule have a small Auto tag on the calendar. They are ordinary scheduled posts: move or unschedule them like any other. An unscheduled post goes back to Draft, so auto-schedule won't put it back until you mark it ready again.

Turning auto-schedule off stops new posts being placed. Posts it already scheduled stay where they are.

How a scheduled post goes out

On WordPress and Ghost, Blog AI sends the post to your site straight away as a scheduled post, and your site publishes it at the time. On Strapi and the other platforms, the post waits in Blog AI and is sent within a few minutes of its time. Either way, you get an email when it goes out, or if it fails and why. The details for each platform are in Publish or schedule a post.