Sometimes a WordPress post may have information that needs to be displayed at a later date, yet the post is ready to be published with other relevant information. You might be planning an ongoing event with some dates available and some that will come due in the future. Learn to control this easily with WordPress.

A simple WordPress Scheduled Text in Post Plugin entitled “Before and After” by Jacob Fresco handles this job in a simple, functional way. It’s not editor or panel driven, so you need to be comfortable placing tags in the WordPress editor.

Download Before and After Plugin (other plugins share the same name)

Some Usage Ideas for This Timed Content Display Plugin

• Concert Dates With Future Dates Known Yet Not Released
• To “Roll Off” Past Dates and Keep a Schedule Clean
• Information Pertinant to the Date of an Event
• Discount Code Made Available Only On a Specific Date(s)

The Tags

<BEFORE YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM>Text</BEFORE>

<AFTER YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM>Text</AFTER>

<ON YYYY-MM-DD>Text</ON>

To Get a Better Idea

<ON 2011-10-02>This should only when the current date is Oct 2</ON>

<BEFORE 2011-10-01 17:00>Shows until set date of Oct 1</BEFORE>

<AFTER 2011-10-02 17:00>Shows After 5pm on Oct 2</AFTER>

There are more examples of combinations that work and some that won’t on the plugin page. The script logic is pretty simple. To get a good feel for how the date ranges work, it’s best to do a test post with pinging turned off if you are live publishing, although, tests work in the draft environment as well, although, it takes a few tries to understand how the clock works.

The front end and source elements end up very clean for those items not displayed.  This might work well for someone who doesn’t have a solution using individual posts to organize dates.

Other Options (if you’d rather expire a post itself)

Content Scheduler Plugin Expires Posts Automatically

Other Plugin, Expires then Deletes Post from the WPMU Post: Schedule Post to Go Back to Draft

(this plugin on the line above is listed compatible up to 2.9.2)

Or if you’re looking for something really premium…

The WPMU DEV Scheduled Content Plugin is well worth a look!

In addition to all the features of the above you also get a fancy WYSIWYG editor option built into TinyMCE.

Select the text you want to schedule and click the schedule button. You can determine how long you want it to be released for, the times it should be released and the dates.

And that’s it. Here it is in action:

Photo: alexkerhead