Blogger in Draft Scheduled Posting

Well, I am back from vacation and it has been a while since I’ve posted. I could have logged in from the Disneyland Resort and posted something or other, but that is just not how I like to vacate. I also don’t feel secure in telling the world that I am not at home and won’t be back for several days. I am not directing my caution at you of course. I am referring to that other guy, lurking over there.

What I had hoped for, but couldn’t manage, was the ability to create a post and publish it at some day and time in the future. That way I could have prepared for my trip and known that I could continue to steadily fuel the blog fire in an automated fashion. Sort of like leaving those dissolving food pellets for the fish to eat while you are away.

When I mentioned this to fellow blogger Erik Handberg, he steered me to Blogger in Draft. It has the very feature that I am looking for, but not yet integrated into the official Blogger site. Blogger in Draft has been around for less than a year but was launched in June of 2007.

As Blogger announced at that time:

we released something for Blogger that we've long wanted to do - an experimental version of the site where the early adopters among you can try out new features before they're ready for full release. We're calling it Blogger in draft because the features are almost ready for publishing, but not quite.

I love the way they provide their warning of what may happen if you work with a Beta.

If you’re feeling adventurous, all you need to do to try it out is log in to draft.blogger.com instead of www.blogger.com. If you see the blueprint logo then you’re in the right place.

Just last month they announced the new feature of scheduled post publishing. In the Blogger in Draft mode, if you write a post and set the post’s date and time to some time in the future, they schedule that post to appear on that date and time.

This is exactly what I attempted to do on the official site, with unsuccessful results.

So I am going to try again. If you have read this blog post, then it has been a successful trial, and I will have no trouble in keeping the posts coming even when traveling about or taking some time off. Very cool.