An issue with posting blog entries from a draft

[Delicieuxz]

I've just posted a blog entry from a draft that I created apparently on July 22, 2019. I never published the draft as a blog until now, yet the publish date on it was July 22, 2019, rather than July 24, 2020.

 

The publishing date remained the same as the date of the creation of the hidden draft, rather than the date that it was actually published. And this affected the post's visibility, as it was ordered in the blog postings list for back in 2019 - which means nobody would see it as a new post.

 

Here's where the original publication appears on page 9 of the blog entries list:

 

 

 

 

 

Here's a link to the original publication, which is dated July 22, 2019 (the date when I must have created the draft file), despite my having not published it until now:

 

Here's a link to its second publication, which has today's date on it and which appears chronologically per the publication date in the blog entries list:

 

[colonel_mortis]

You can change the publish date when editing the blog entry - if you set it to "immediately", it will take the current time.

[Delicieuxz]

2 minutes ago, colonel_mortis said:

You can change the publish date when editing the blog entry - if you set it to "immediately", it will take the current time.

I haven't used that feature. My assumption was that it was for setting a future date for the blog to publish, so that it would be published automatically at a date and time set by the writer without them having to be there to manually publish it.

[colonel_mortis]

Just now, Delicieuxz said:

I haven't used that feature. My assumption was that it was for setting a future date for the blog to publish, so that it would be published automatically at a date and time set by the writer without them having to be there to manually publish it.

I don't disagree, but this is a poorly designed feature rather than a bug.

[Delicieuxz]

I've been trying-out the publish date feature just now.

 

The publish date can be set to either in the future, the present, or a past date. I expected that when I set the publish date to 5 minutes from the present, that it would publish automatically once that time arrived. But it didn't - it only said "Entry by Delicieuxz publishes on · July 24, 2020" until the time arrived.

 

Once the chosen publish time arrived, the "Entry by Delicieuxz publishes on · July 24, 2020" part disappeared from the draft date and was replaced with "Entry posted by Delicieuxz · 2 minutes ago". But the post remained a draft, after the chosen time had passed. So, even a date-scheduled blog still needs to be published manually in order for it to become publicly visible.

 

If the publish date is set to a previous date and time, then the post moves to that date and time in the list of posted blogs. It can be changed at any time on the edit screen for a published post, and the post will move to the newly-set date and time in the order of published blog posts.

 

 

It's an interesting feature that gives a lot of control to the publisher, but what its purpose is for, I'm unsure of. It seems a bit nonsensical to me that the publish date doesn't have to actually be the publish date but can be anything chosen by the writer and can be changed at any time, because a publish date is not an opinion and preference, but is a matter of fact. And it could be exploited by someone who changes the post-date for their blog to keep it always at the front of posted blogs, or who changes the date of a published blog to pretend they claimed or reported something earlier than they actually did.

 

 

Also, is there no way to delete a blog entry, other than reverting it to an unpublished draft? I though there was.

 

BTW, the views on my "Test Blog Entry" unpublished blog (I published it briefly but reverted it to a draft) have kept going up by many views between my refresh intervals while it's unpublished, which suggests it's visible to people other than myself. But when I view the blog from outside my account, I don't see it listed in the list of published blogs or among the posts in my Miscellaneous blog. I guess moderators could be seeing it. But otherwise I don't know what explains the increase in views while it was in an unpublished state, both before and then again after I temporarily published it.

 

Though, maybe it counts each time I refresh the page as another view, but doesn't update the number of views frequently, causing a bunch of views to suddenly appear at once later on.

[Delicieuxz]

Three times now, I've noticed that my "Test blog entry" post has become publicly visible around 7 minutes after the chosen publish date.

 

So, when choosing a future publish date, it does publish automatically after the chosen date and time arrives. But it becomes published and publicly visible not immediately at the selected date and time, but around 7 minutes after that chosen time.

[colonel_mortis]

12 hours ago, Delicieuxz said:

Three times now, I've noticed that my "Test blog entry" post has become publicly visible around 7 minutes after the chosen publish date.

 

So, when choosing a future publish date, it does publish automatically after the chosen date and time arrives. But it becomes published and publicly visible not immediately at the selected date and time, but around 7 minutes after that chosen time.

Publishing unpublished content is run as a task in the background every 10 minutes, so there will be a delay of up to 10 minutes between the scheduled and actual publishing time.

 

13 hours ago, Delicieuxz said:

 

BTW, the views on my "Test Blog Entry" unpublished blog (I published it briefly but reverted it to a draft) have kept going up by many views between my refresh intervals while it's unpublished, which suggests it's visible to people other than myself. But when I view the blog from outside my account, I don't see it listed in the list of published blogs or among the posts in my Miscellaneous blog. I guess moderators could be seeing it. But otherwise I don't know what explains the increase in views while it was in an unpublished state, both before and then again after I temporarily published it.

 

Though, maybe it counts each time I refresh the page as another view, but doesn't update the number of views frequently, causing a bunch of views to suddenly appear at once later on.

Every view of your "Test Blog Entry" in the past 3 days has been by you.

 

13 hours ago, Delicieuxz said:

Also, is there no way to delete a blog entry, other than reverting it to an unpublished draft? I though there was.

There may have been at one point, but there is not currently.