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Scheduled publishing

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Wagtail supports scheduling content for new and existing pages, as well as when configured for snippets. Page publishing can be scheduled through the Set schedule feature in the Status side panel of the Edit page (see Manage pages).

Scheduling content updates

The basic workflow is as follows:

  • Scheduling is done by setting the go-live at field of the page and clicking Publish.
  • Scheduling a revision for a page that is not currently live means that page will go live when the scheduled time comes.
  • Scheduling a new version for a page that is already live means that the new version will be published when the time comes.
  • If the page has a scheduled revision and you set another revision to publish immediately (i.e. clicking Publish with the go-live at field unset), the scheduled revision will be unscheduled.
  • If the page has a scheduled revision and you schedule another revision to publish (i.e. clicking Publish with the go-live at field set), the existing scheduled revision will be unscheduled and the new revision will be scheduled instead.

Note that you have to click Publish after setting the go-live at field for the revision to be scheduled. Saving a draft revision with the go-live at field without clicking Publish will not schedule it to be published.

The History view for a given page will show which revision is scheduled and when it is scheduled. A scheduled revision in the list will also provide an Unschedule button to cancel it.

Scheduled unpublishing

In addition to scheduling a page to be published, it is also possible to schedule a page to be unpublished by setting the expire at field. However, unlike with publishing, the unpublishing schedule is applied to the live page instance rather than a specific revision. This means that any change to the expire at field will only be effective once the associated revision is published (i.e. when the changes are applied to the live instance). To illustrate:

  • Scheduled unpublishing is done by setting the expire at field of the page and clicking Publish. If the go-live at field is also set, then the unpublishing schedule will only be applied after the revision goes live.
  • Consider a live page that is scheduled to be unpublished on e.g. 14 June. Then sometime before the schedule, consider that a new revision is scheduled to be published on a date that’s earlier than the unpublishing schedule, e.g. 9 June. When the new revision goes live on 9 June, the expire at field contained in the new revision will replace the existing unpublishing schedule. This means:
    • If the new revision contains a different expire at field (e.g. 17 June), the new revision will go live on 9 June and the page will not be unpublished on 14 June but will be unpublished on 17 June.
    • If the new revision has the expire at field unset, the new revision will go live on 9 June and the unpublishing schedule will be unset, thus the page will not be unpublished.
  • Consider another live page that is scheduled to be unpublished on e.g. 14 June. Then sometime before the schedule, consider that a new revision is scheduled to be published on a date that’s later than the unpublishing schedule, e.g. 21 June. The new revision will not take effect until it goes live on 21 June, so the page will still be unpublished on 14 June. This means:
    • If the new revision contains a different expire at field (e.g. 25 June), the page will be unpublished on 14 June, the new revision will go live on 21 June and the page will be unpublished again on 25 June.
    • If the new revision has the expire at field unset, the page will be unpublished on 14 June and the new revision will go live on 21 June.

Scheduling frequency

For scheduling to work, developers must have set up the publish_scheduled management command. This can be run every hour, or every 15 minutes, or at any other interval depending on the needs of the website.