By default, a blog is a series of posts in reverse chronological sequence—that is, with the most recent posts first. Blog posts are timestamped when you push the Publish button.
From time to time, however, you may wish to override the timestamp of publication. WordPress makes this quite easy to do. Simply click on the Edit link next to “Publish immediately” and you can specify a different date and time for publication.
But why would anyone ever want to do this?
As it turns out, I just did this on my personal blog. There was a humorous YouTube video which was appropriate for Trinity Sunday, but I had let the date pass without posting it. To complicate matters, it had been over a year since my previous post (gasp!), and I wanted to address that lapse first.
So I set out to write two posts, predated, as follows:
- How to Resume Blogging after an Extended Absense (Friday, May 24)
- Trinity Sunday (Sunday, May 26)
To change the publication date and time, all I had to do was override the default of immediately with the desired dates (and times that made sense). The image to the right shows the chosen date and time of the first of these two posts.
Another use of this feature is to produce a series of blog posts spread out over a number of days. You could write them all at once and simply postdate the ones you wanted to be published at a later date. I do this sometimes before heading off on vacation where I know Internet access will be sketchy.
In general, the current date and time is what you want for your posts, but you are not locked into this. I hope I’ve given you some realistic examples of when to override the publication date and time of your posts.