Title: Gap between draft posting (idea)
Last modified: September 11, 2026

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# Gap between draft posting (idea)

 *  Resolved [gama](https://wordpress.org/support/users/gamark/)
 * (@gamark)
 * [6 days, 10 hours ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/gap-between-draft-posting-idea/)
 * I am using your plugin and I realized it would be nice to have the option to 
   add a gap between drafts publishing. For example, I use posts as draft (news 
   posts) and instead of blasting say 10 posts at once, I was thinking a small gap
   between them would be nice so every x minutes, y number of drafts are publishes
   every z seconds
   For example:
 * Default Interval (minutes) [ 3 ]
 * Posts Per Run [ 2 ]
 * Gap Between Posts (seconds) [ 10 ]

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

 *  Plugin Author [techygeekshome](https://wordpress.org/support/users/techygeekshome/)
 * (@techygeekshome)
 * [5 days, 18 hours ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/gap-between-draft-posting-idea/#post-19018191)
 * <span style=”font-size: inherit;”>Thanks for the suggestion, it was a fair gap.
   Until now Posts Per Run published the whole batch in the same tick, so ten posts
   went out in the same second.</span>
 * Added in 1.7.6, which is live now. There is a new **Gap Between Posts (seconds)**
   setting. The first post of a run publishes straight away and the rest are spaced
   out by whatever you set. Leave it at 0 and nothing changes from before.
 * Your example works as you wrote it: Default Interval 3, Posts Per Run 2, Gap 
   10.
 * One thing worth knowing. WordPress cron only runs when someone visits the site,
   so the gap is a minimum rather than an exact spacing. On a quiet site a 10 second
   gap can stretch out. If you need it accurate, disable WP cron and set up a real
   server cron. There is a note about this on the setting itself.
 *  Thread Starter [gama](https://wordpress.org/support/users/gamark/)
 * (@gamark)
 * [5 days, 10 hours ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/gap-between-draft-posting-idea/#post-19018294)
 * Good stuff (now I will get rid of the mod I already made to your plugin to this
   on my website), I will update. Thanks.
 * As for the WP Cron can be helped by setting and automatic Cron job from the hosting
   platform like this:
 * `*/5 * * * *
   wget -q -O - "https://{your_domain}/wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron"
 * This way your website is always publishing every 5 minutes and I set my interval
   for articles around that.
 * A final thought, on my other comment I showed how a small mod to publish now 
   the posts and not publish in the past is actually a very nice tweak for your 
   plugin. I think you can give users an option to select (publish now or publish
   with post date). 
   My use case: I write news in draft format and instead of posting
   all the news at once, I spread it out a bit, this way the website looks “alive”.
   I use your plugin to do that. So having draft posts showing every X minutes at
   Y seconds intervals, published now (instead of the moment the draft was created),
   combined with another custom plugin to notify people something new was just published,
   makes your plugin gold for a content website.
    -  This reply was modified 5 days, 10 hours ago by [gama](https://wordpress.org/support/users/gamark/).
 *  Thread Starter [gama](https://wordpress.org/support/users/gamark/)
 * (@gamark)
 * [5 days, 10 hours ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/gap-between-draft-posting-idea/#post-19018302)
 * I am being pedantic now… In your [controlled-draft-publisher.php](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/controlled-draft-publisher/tags/1.7.6/controlled-draft-publisher.php)
   lines 368–370 I replaced this line
 * `$result = wp_update_post( [ 'ID' => $id, 'post_status' => 'publish' ], true );`
 * with
 *     ```wp-block-code
       $current_time = current_time( 'mysql' );$result = wp_update_post(    [        'ID'            => $id,        'post_status'   => 'publish',        'post_date'     => $current_time,        'post_date_gmt' => get_gmt_from_date( $current_time ),    ],    true);
       ```
   
 *  Plugin Author [techygeekshome](https://wordpress.org/support/users/techygeekshome/)
 * (@techygeekshome)
 * [4 days, 23 hours ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/gap-between-draft-posting-idea/#post-19018547)
 * Good catch, and you are not being pedantic, it is a real bug.
 * It is sneakier than it looks. WordPress does move a draft’s date to now when 
   you publish it, but only if that draft has never had a date of its own, which
   it tracks with an empty post_date_gmt. So a draft you typed in the editor was
   always fine. A draft that was scheduled and then put back to draft, or reverted
   from published, or imported, keeps a real post_date_gmt, and those are the ones
   going live under the old date.
 * I have taken your fix, with edit_date set to true as well, and put it behind 
   a new Publish Date setting that is on by default. That also covers the option
   you asked for in your previous reply, so anyone drip publishing old archive content
   can keep the original dates if they want.
 * Going out as 1.7.7. Thanks for the report and the patch, you are credited in 
   the changelog.
 *  Thread Starter [gama](https://wordpress.org/support/users/gamark/)
 * (@gamark)
 * [4 days, 23 hours ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/gap-between-draft-posting-idea/#post-19018554)
 * Great!
 * This plugin is a very useful one. Thank you!

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

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## Tags

 * [upgrade](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/upgrade/)

 * 5 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [gama](https://wordpress.org/support/users/gamark/)
 * Last activity: [4 days, 23 hours ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/gap-between-draft-posting-idea/#post-19018554)
 * Status: resolved