← Back to CMS

CMS

Scheduled Publishing Must Be Server-Side and Fire Independent of Editor Activity

7 min read

Scheduled content should publish at the exact configured time whether or not the editor is logged in, using a reliable background job rather than a client-triggered mechanism.

Rule

Scheduled publish must run server-side and fire reliably without human intervention.

Why

Client-triggered publish depends on someone having the CMS open at the right time, which is unreliable.

Must

  • Store the scheduled_at timestamp as UTC on the content item.
  • Run a background job on an interval to publish all items where scheduled_at <= now.
  • Idempotently process the publish job to avoid double publishing.
  • Send a notification to the author when the item goes live.

Should

  • Allow cancellation of a scheduled publish before it fires.
  • Show the editor what content is scheduled and when in a calendar view.

Anti-patterns

  • Triggering schedule publish only when an editor navigates to the content list.
  • No idempotency guard on the publish job.

Test Cases

  • Item with scheduled_at in the past is published on next job run.
  • Running the job twice does not create duplicate publishes.

Telemetry

  • scheduled_publish_fired
  • scheduled_publish_skipped_already_published
  • schedule_cancelled_before_fire