Blogging Woes ~ Scheduled Posts and Twitter Not Posting

So, I’ve been experiencing some blogging woes again lately. Have you ever had a job to do and it hits an unexplainable hiccup. You research it. Then pass it off as a fluke. THEN, low and behold, it happens again. Sigh.

Yep. This happened to me at the beginning of the month, then again the very next week. Dang it. It happened again. You know what that means??? Me neither. I have no idea! Lol! Well, other than a headache for this blogger who is NOT a web-master. This non-web-master now has to dive in and learn new and amazing things crash course style. Oh, joy!

The Issue

The last couple of weeks my posts have not “gone live” as I had scheduled them to in advance, and the “posting to Twitter” function also has not been working. This is quite annoying and unacceptable. I needed to dig in and get this figured out. So, last Saturday I sat down to “get ‘er done”.

I researched. Tested suggestions. And researched some more. Overall, I spent five to six hours Saturday stressing out at my computer. And more random research and reading throughout the evening. Not really what I had planned for the day. Actually, I didn’t accomplish any of my plans. Sigh…

What I’ve Done

To make this a little easier to read and to the point I’ll list out the basic things I did in an attempt to get my site straightened out.

• I made sure I had a fresh backup. (Took a bit to find where to do that manually.)
• Researched the internet for forums and blog posts on the subject.
• Followed the suggestion to deactivate all plugins. And test the system. Dud.
• Reactivated plugins one by one testing for success after each one. Dud.
• Switch to the default WordPress theme Twenty Sixteen. Then tested for success. Dud.
• Switched back to preferred theme. Dud.
• Begin to wonder if I’ll ever figure this issue out. Hmmm….
• Prayed. (Peace resumed. Thank you, Jesus!)
• Researched the “net” some more.
• Research in WordPress for plugins various people suggested to diagnose issues.
• Installed, tested for improvements and deleted several suggested plugins. Dud.
• More internet research.
• Eat chocolate and nuts. (This stuff is draining! Lol!)
• More research. (Not really seeing anything new to try.)
• (Question my sanity in this whole blog thing. Lol!)
• Eat dinner.
• More research. (I’m at a loss at this point.)
• Sleep on it.

And more research the next day. This time I changed my browser search engine, and… Voila!

Miraculously, I saw a whole BUNCH of articles I hadn’t seen yet! Like an actual instructional from WordPress on the topic. Who would’ve thought it! Lol! I had actually tried to find the topic on their site Saturday, but was unsuccessful for whatever reason.

What I’m Going To Try

So… Per this WordPress support article I found in my new search results. “Scheduled posts will be triggered by the first visit to your blog on or after the exact date/time you set. If you see that the scheduled time has come and gone and your post has not published, simply log out of WordPress.com and view your blog’s front page. Your visit should cause the post to appear.”

So. It appears “scheduling a post” isn’t as “automatic” as I once thought it was. Lol! I’m going to proceed as normal and test it out with this week’s post.

There’s More!

While logging in this week to copy this post into WordPress I saw the option to “reinstall” WordPress 5.1.1. What the heck! I’m putting my fingers on everything else, which hasn’t helped. Lol! So, I reinstalled WordPress. After all my recent research, I understand a little more about what I’m reading on all the “updates and changes”.

(If you’re curious as to why I don’t write my blog posts within the site editor you can check out one of my other blogging woes I wrote about. That was an experience I prefer not to repeat!)

Back to the present, I also ran the PHP Compatibility Checker again as suggested. Nothing significant showed up. So, that’s a dud as far as resolving my current issues.

I should be good to go now right? Right.

Ok. I’m done. (Really this time!) Ready or not, let’s roll!

I’ll proceed as normal and test it out with this week’s post. Wish me luck and say a prayer!

NOTE: I’ll be sure to come back and edit in an update to let you know how it all goes down.

UPDATE 1: In finalizing this post I noticed my option to automatically “share this post” to Twitter is now working again. Yay!!! This functionality was still not working at the end of all the attempts I tried on Saturday. I think this improvement occurred from re-installing WordPress.

UPDATE 2: ***Approx 30 minutes after Scheduled Post time*** It looks like I’m live and active on all fronts! Woohoooo!!! My best guess is Re-Installing WordPress did the trick. Yay!

Hopefully, this will help someone else having trouble with scheduled posts not posting wherever they should be as planned.

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