How to Bulk Schedule Posts in WordPress

April 30. 2022

If you’re running a blog in WordPress, you’re probably familiar with post scheduling. But did you know there are ways to bulk schedule posts in WordPress? It can really come in handy, especially if you’re stuck with several articles that are waiting to be published. We at WP Full Care know exactly how useful this feature can be so further in this article, you can find a detailed guide on scheduling multiple posts at the same time.

When should you bulk schedule posts in WordPress?

If you’re the only author on your blog, you can use WordPress’s default post scheduling tool to effortlessly schedule your blog entries. In case you haven’t done it before, here’s how to. Simply select the “post tab” from the right sidebar and select “Publish” from the drop-down menu. This will bring up a calendar where you can easily add this post to your schedule. Simply choose the date and the best time to publish a blog and you’re good to go.

You can view all of your planned posts in the WordPress dashboard by going to Posts » All Posts. You will see the “scheduled tab” and there you’ll see a list of all of your upcoming posts with the dates on which they are planned to be published.

As you can see, scheduling a post is very simple. However, if you need to schedule multiple posts, it can take a while. With the built-in WordPress scheduling tool, you must first open each post and select a publication date and time for each one.

However, if you add a tool to help you bulk schedule posts in WordPress, you can quickly and easily solve this problem. In fact, this tool will do much more for you and your website:

• It will free up time for you to focus on developing your WordPress blog’s traffic and readership.
• It’s also very helpful if you have a multi-author blog. A precise schedule can keep everyone on track when you’re dealing with a lot of different writers.
• Regularly publishing posts on your WordPress website has a tremendous impact on your SEO. Adding a bulk schedule tool will help you ensure you never miss publishing a post and thus risk unnecessary negative effects on your SEO.

Now let’s look at how to bulk schedule posts in WordPress.

The simplest way to bulk schedule posts in WordPress

One of the biggest benefits of having a WordPress website is that there is a plugin for anything you might need. The same goes when you want to bulk schedule posts in WordPress. In that case, the plugin you need is the Editorial Calendar plugin. It’s a free WordPress plugin that is very simple to use. It allows you to construct a schedule by dragging and dropping items.

As soon as you install and activate the Editorial Calendar plugin, you’ll be able to see the calendar view in your WordPress dashboard. In the upper right corner of your screen, you’ll see the “Show Unscheduled Drafts” link. If you click on it, you’ll open a sidebar displaying all of your unscheduled drafts. While this sidebar is visible, the link changes to “Hide Unscheduled Drafts“.

The next step is to take the draft you want to include in your calendar. Simply drag it and drop it onto any day in the calendar. By default, any post will be scheduled for 9 am. However, Editorial Calendar allows you to change this, too. Simply hover over the post if you wish to publish it at a different time and click on the “Quick Edit” link. As a result, you’ll get a pop-up where you can select a different time for the post to go live from the dropdown menu. You can now repeat all of the steps to bulk schedule all your drafts.

How to modify your schedule using drag and drop?

In an ideal world, you would make your schedule once and then follow it religiously. In the real world though, this is almost never the case. It’s very possible that you’ll need to make changes to your schedule or even remove some posts entirely.

Editorial Calendar makes editing your calendar easy, too. If you want to modify the day on which a certain post is scheduled to go live, simply select that post and drag it to the new date. To delete a planned post, simply go to the upper right corner of the page and click the “Show Unscheduled Drafts” link. Now drag and drop your draft into the ‘Unscheduled Drafts’ sidebar and you’re good to go. This is the simplest as well as a most effective method for removing an article from your schedule.

You’ll probably notice a “Delete” link when hovering over a post in the calendar view, too. This not only deletes the post from your calendar but also sends it to your Trash bin. So if you want to remove an article from your schedule without fully deleting it, use the ‘Unscheduled Drafts’ sidebar. After all, it’s important to have a backup as you never know when the post will come in handy.

How to use Editorial Calendar to create and bulk schedule new drafts?

Editorial Calendar gives you another way to bulk schedule drafts in WordPress. You can simply generate blank drafts in the calendar view and move them around the calendar. This is especially handy if you’re collaborating with multiple authors. You can simply generate drafts for all of your planned posts using the calendar view, and then assign these drafts to your authors.

This way, you’ll ensure everyone on your team knows what they’re working on and when their posts are due. Adding new drafts is pretty simple, too. Just hover over the day you want to publish the new post, and click on the “New Post” link once it appears. You’ll be presented with a popup where you’ll need to enter the title for the post.

If you want to, you’ll be able to also select the date and hour for the post to be published. You can always modify the day and time later if you make a mistake. You’ll also notice a “Status” drop-down menu. By default, it’s set to draft which means that the Editorial Calendar will prepare a draft without automatically publishing it at the date and hour you specify.

You can even write your post in the “Content” field of this popup. Even though the Content field lacks the formatting options available in the full WordPress post editor, it is useful for providing a concise description of what the post should include. Editorial Calendar is a convenient shortcut if you need to access the full WordPress editor. In the calendar view, simply hover over the post and then click on the “Edit” link. This will bring up the usual WordPress editor.

Final thoughts

So if you want to bulk schedule posts in WordPress, Editorial Calendar is the easiest way to go. As you can see, it’s simple and straightforward to use so even if you have beginners on your team, we’re sure they’ll get a hang of it quickly. Luckily, you can always reach out to the WP Full Care team and they’ll help you with any WordPress-related matter. At the end of the day, nothing can beat having experienced professionals on your side handling every aspect of your website, and ensuring it runs smoothly.