WP Auto Publishing Queue releases

Automatically publish queued draft posts on a controlled daily schedule using WordPress Cron.

Built by Md. Fakharuddin (Manik)

What it does

WP Auto Publishing Queue lets you add standard draft posts to a queue and have them publish automatically, one by one, inside a daily time window you control — instead of publishing everything at once or relying on manual clicks.

• Enable/disable automatic publishing
• Configurable daily publishing window (start/end time)
• Posts-per-day limit and minimum gap between publishes
• Randomized publish times inside the allowed window (not fixed intervals)
• Add/remove posts from the Posts list (row actions + bulk action) or from inside the post editor
• WP-Cron based background processing
• Retry handling for failed publish attempts, with a configurable retry limit and interval
• Publishing Queue, Publishing Logs, and Settings admin screens
• Dashboard widget showing queue status at a glance
• Email notifications for permanent failures, an empty queue, or a low queue
• Respects your site's WordPress timezone setting
• Random posts-per-day mode (a min/max range instead of a fixed number)
• Block publishing on specific weekdays and/or specific dates, with posts already scheduled on a date that becomes blocked automatically rescheduled onto the next valid day
• Clear All Logs option on the Publishing Logs page

Only standard WordPress posts with draft status can be queued. Pages and custom post types are not supported in this version.

Installation

1. Download the latest release zip from the Releases page.
2. In your WordPress admin, go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin, and upload the zip. (Or unzip it into /wp-content/plugins/ via FTP/File Manager.)
3. Activate WP Auto Publishing Queue from the Plugins screen.
4. Go to Auto Publisher → Settings, enable automatic publishing, and set your preferred daily window, posts-per-day limit, and minimum gap.
5. Add drafts to the queue from the Posts list (row action or bulk action) or from the post editor sidebar.
6. Open Auto Publisher → Publishing Queue and click Generate Today's Schedule.

Requirements

• WordPress 6.0+
• PHP 7.4+
• A working WP-Cron (default on most hosts). On low-traffic or heavily cached sites, WP-Cron only fires when the site gets a visit, so for precise timing set up a real server cron job that calls wp-cron.php every 5 minutes instead of relying on page-load-triggered cron.

How scheduling works

Each day, the plugin picks random publish times inside your configured window (respecting the minimum gap between posts and your posts-per-day limit) for as many queued drafts as fit. A background cron job checks every few minutes for posts that are due and publishes them. If a publish attempt fails, the post is retried according to your retry settings before being marked as permanently failed (visible in Publishing Logs).

Uninstalling

By default, uninstalling the plugin keeps your settings and logs in the database in case you reinstall it. If you want a full cleanup (drop all plugin tables and options) on uninstall, add this to your wp-config.php before uninstalling:

define( 'WPAPQ_DELETE_DATA_ON_UNINSTALL', true );

License

GPLv2 or later — see LICENSE.

Author

Developed by Md. Fakharuddin (Manik) — bloggingshout.com

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. Please open an issue describing the bug or feature before submitting a large PR.