How to schedule posts in Wagtail

This video features Meagen at Wagtail CMS 2025 .

How to schedule posts in Wagtail
0:03:54
Published March 11, 2025
317 views

No one wants to get up early or stay up late just to publish a blog post. The scheduling feature in Wagtail is a great tool for scheduling content to go live at a time that works well for you and your audience. In this video, Meagen will show you how to schedule content in Wagtail so you won't have to work at weird hours just to publish your posts.

Want more Wagtail tips? Sign up for our newsletter here: https://wagtail.org/newsletter/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=quarter-1-2025
Learn more about the scheduling feature here: https://guide.wagtail.org/en-latest/concepts/scheduled-publishing/

đź’» Wagtail is the easiest open-source Python CMS to use:
Install the demo and start building your first site in 10 minutes: https://wagtail.org/get-started/

What will I learn from this video?

You will learn how to schedule content using Wagtail's built-in scheduling feature. You can set a time for content to go live as well as set a time for content to expire too. This feature can be used for pages and blog posts and even for some other types of content (like Snippets) within Wagtail.

📹 Related Videos To Watch Next:

â–¶ Wagtail Lingo 101 https://youtu.be/ls4JvDXXhO8?feature=shared
â–¶ How to clean up your Wagtail User Accounts https://youtu.be/BTWCLBYtPYk
▶ What’s New in Wagtail CMS 6.0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AxLFyOFjQo

Wagtail future proofs your CMS system, as it’s open source, continuously updated and built on Python, one of the most popular global programming languages, used widely in machine learning and big data. So you’re always ahead of the curve when it comes to CMS platforms.

Wagtail is the #1 choice for accessibility, is scalable and most importantly, secure.

👉 Get started with a FREE Wagtail CMS TRIAL: https://wagtail.org/get-started/
and see how easy it is to build a website that works for you.

📊 Read why Google, NASA, and the British NHS, are powering their digital estates with Wagtail: https://wagtail.org/about-wagtail/

🎥 More Wagtail Videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cne2kxemMAQ&list=PLfwZ-fob20cPvSQ_v1hkjto8BAPN21tLJ

📣 Follow us on social:

#WagtailCMS #Django #content #contentcreation

Summary

Wagtail lets editors schedule a page to be published at a chosen date and time, and optionally set an expiry time so it is unpublished later. To schedule a post, open the page’s Status menu, choose “Set schedule,” enter the publishing details, save them, and then click the main Publish button—saving the schedule alone is not enough. A scheduled page is locked for editing; to change it, cancel the scheduled publication, make the edits, and schedule it again. The example also notes that Wagtail uses the editor’s time zone, so the chosen time can be checked against the audience’s local time.

Key takeaways

  • Use Status → Set schedule to choose when a Wagtail page goes live.
  • You can also set an expiry time for limited-time content.
  • After saving the schedule, click the main Publish button to activate it.
  • Scheduled pages are locked; cancel the schedule before editing and rescheduling.
  • Check the selected time zone when scheduling for readers in another region.

Summarised automatically from the transcript.

Transcript

714 words · auto-generated Show

Automatically transcribed, so expect mistakes in names and technical terms.

0:00

Hello everyone, I'm back with another great Wagtail tip to share with you this week. So scheduling content ahead of time is a very useful tool. Because a writer might need to go on vacation. Or honestly, you just might not feel like getting up at 3 a. m. to schedule a blog post I don't drink coffee because it gives me migraines, but if I did drink coffee, it would take a bathtub of coffee to get me up at that hour just to schedule a blog post. So instead of doing that, let me show you how to use the schedule feature in Wagtail to schedule a blog post to go live whenever you want it to. Alright, so here I have an example blog post. And down here, normally if I was just going to publish it live whenever I'm ready to publish it, I would hit the bit

0:46

this big green button here. But we're not going to do that. To schedule a post, we need to go over here to this menu and we're going to click status. And under status, you'll see a lot of useful information about your page. And what you want to go to is this set schedule link right here under the publishing schedule area. And we're going to click that. And you'll see that there are two options for setting the publishing schedule. You can set a time for the blog post to go live. And you can also set a time for the blog post to go away. So which could be very useful if you have a post that like presented a limited time offer or maybe you have applications for a grant that are only open for so long

1:32

can be very useful to set a time for the post to expire as well. But we're not going to do that in this example. I just want to go ahead and schedule it for the next day. And I want this post, uh most of my coworkers are in the UK and I'm in the United States. So I'm gonna pick a time when the post will go live for the morning for them, but it would be ridiculously early for me. So in my time zone. It would be 3 a. m. and the post will go live around 8 a. m. in the UK. And so once I'm happy with that schedule, I'm gonna go ahead and click save schedule. And you're not done here yet. This is important. And that's what the big warning at the top of the scheduling piece was about.

2:20

You actually have to go down here and hit the big green publish button to make everything get saved and to have your posts scheduled appropriately. So let's go ahead and click that publish button. And so now you'll see that my post is listed here at the top And the status is currently listed as scheduled, which means that it'll go live at 3 a. m. my time and 8 a. m. UK time, just the way I wanted it to. But let's say my boss decided at the last minute he's not a big fan of the title I used, or I need to update something in the text. So let's go ahead and click back in here, and you'll see right now that the post is currently locked because of the scheduling But you can just go ahead and click this button right here to cancel the scheduled published.

3:09

It'll undo everything. You'll have to redo everything in order to get it rescheduled and all that. But now you can make any changes you need and go ahead and reschedule the the post. So that's how you use the scheduling feature in Wagtail. I hope you find this very useful. I hope it saves you some time and also prevents you from doing some you know, weird hours to get your posts live. And I hope you really don't need a bathtub of coffee in order to get your publishing done. So please take this knowledge, go forth, have fun with it. If you'd like to learn more about Wagtail, please sign up for our newsletter at Wagtail. org slash newsletter.

Questions this talk answers

How do I schedule a post to publish later in Wagtail?

Open the page’s Status menu, choose “Set schedule,” set the time for the post to go live, save the schedule, and then click the green Publish button to finalize it. The post will show a Scheduled status until it goes live.

Discussed at 0:46

Can I schedule a Wagtail post to expire automatically?

Yes. Wagtail’s publishing schedule lets you set both a start time for the post to go live and an end time for it to go away, which is useful for limited-time offers or application periods.

Discussed at 0:46

Why do I still need to click Publish after saving a schedule in Wagtail?

Saving the schedule alone is not enough: you must click the green Publish button to save the settings and apply the scheduled publication.

Discussed at 2:20

How do I edit or cancel a scheduled post in Wagtail?

Open the scheduled post and click the option to cancel the scheduled publish. This unlocks the page so you can make changes, but you must set up the schedule again afterward.

Discussed at 3:09

Presenters

Note: We understand that names change, people change, and bodies change. We respect each individual's journey and privacy. If you have any concerns about a video or need us to remove content, please don't hesitate to contact us. We will handle your request with care and promptly address any issues.

More videos by Meagen

More videos from Wagtail CMS