Start time should generate when you enable preview link

Hello,

Below is a conversation of my findings when a client was having issues trusting the expiration time (set to 5 days with us using the filter). E.g. he would generate a link on Thursday but it would expire on Saturday, 3 days later, not 5. My findings are summed up in my response:

You’ll be glad to hear…I was wrong! I did find out something interesting just now: the Public Preview plugin generates the expiration time when you save the post (as a Draft), not when you enable the public preview checkbox.

Next time you want to enable public preview (when you check the box), go ahead and also save your post (even if you haven’t made any changes) right after you enable it.

What you’re probably doing is starting a post, saving it as a draft as you go along, maybe finishing edits, say, Monday. Then, say, Thursday, enabling public preview, sharing the link, and then closing out your window. The start time is from Monday, not Thursday because Monday was the last day you hit save. So it expires on Saturday instead of Tuesday.

This is definitely the plugin, so I’m going to make an effort to contact the developer and see what we can do about that because I think the start time should be generated when you check the checkbox, regardless if you save at that point or not, because you may not have made any changes.

I’m sharing this because, as I mentioned above, having the time generate when you save the post doesn’t always ensure that when you generate the link that the time will be accurate. Our client here was enabling the link but not hitting save (they had finished the post earlier that week) and so his time was off.

Let me know if you need help, I could spin up a patch!