How to prevent posts from being published too close to each other?

2 comments

1. Here is a very rough block of code that should get you started. What it does is look for the most recent “future” or “publish” post and if that value is less than 1 hour different from the latest scheduled post, it schedules the current post to one hour plus the “most recent” time found.

   function force_time_between_posts_wpse_104677($data, $postarr) {
     global $wpdb;
     if (empty($postarr['ID'])) return $data;
   
     $latest = $wpdb->get_var("
       SELECT post_date
       FROM {$wpdb->posts} 
       WHERE post_status IN('future','publish') 
       AND post_type = 'post' 
       AND ID != {$postarr['ID']}
       ORDER BY post_date DESC
       LIMIT 1");
     $distance = 60; // post publication spacing in minutes
     $latest = strtotime($latest);
     $current = strtotime($data['post_date']);
   
     if ($latest < $current) {
       $diff = $current - $latest;
     } else { 
       $diff = 0;
     }
   
     if ($diff >= 0 && $diff < ($distance * 60)) {
       $new_date = $latest + ($distance * 60);
       $date = date('Y-m-d H:i:s',$new_date);
       $date_gmt = get_gmt_from_date($date);
       $data['post_date'] = $date;
       $data['post_date_gmt'] = $date_gmt;
       $data['post_status'] = 'future';
     }
     return $data;
   }
   add_action('wp_insert_post_data','force_time_between_posts_wpse_104677',1,2);
   

   This does in fact force the post scheduling, and if there is already a future post the next one will be scheduled after that already scheduled post. That means that it could potentially schedule posts far into the future.

   You may want to exempt certain roles from this post scheduling, or require it only for a single role, just to help keep things manageable.

2. There is a plugin in the repository named Auto Future Date which does something like this. It hasn’t been updated for quite a while, but most of the code seems pretty useful.

   I haven’t tested it, but the screenshots make it look like you can still directly publish the post and not stick to the save_post hook automatically. Making this code work with the right hooks should do the trick.

Comments are closed.