03 · Scheduled publishing

The date field is the moment of publication, not a note of when something was written. An entry whose date has not yet passed is in the repository but not on the site: it appears in no series, no stream, no feed and no sitemap, and visiting its address ends the same way as visiting an address that does not exist.

The practical consequence is that the publishing queue is ordinary files. Three months of entries can be prepared at once, uploaded in a single deployment, and left — each will come out at its hour, with no calendar task and no service that has to be healthy that day.

The hour is taken seriously, not just the date. An entry set for six in the morning appears at six, not at midnight, so a schedule can be fitted to the time readers actually look in.

The only trap runs opposite to expectation: an entry meant to appear immediately needs a date in the past. A date set to "now" while writing is often a minute ahead, and then the entry stays silent until that minute.