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Users Manual

The Content Scheduler extension adds a Publication Repeat Interval field to the Access tab of a content element. Here you specify the repeat interval for the publication of the content element. The repeat interval consists of two parts:

  1. The repeat interval value (e.g. "2")
  2. The repeat interval unit: minutes, hours, days, weeks (e.g. "weeks")

The above example results in "2 weeks", so the content element will be published every two weeks.

Usage Examples

How does Content Scheduler know when to publish the content element? Content Scheduler uses the Publish Date and Expiration Date fields of the content element, available by default in TYPO3 CMS, to determine when to publish the content element. Based on the specified interval, the math is like this:

  1. Publish Date is used to determine the publication day and time. For example: if Publish Date is set to "20:00 6-5-2014" and Publication Repeat Interval to "3 days", the content element will be published on 6-5-2014 20:00h, 9-5-2014 20:00h, 12-5-2014 20:00h etc.
  2. Expiration Date is used to determine the publication duration. For example: if Publish Date is set to "20:00 6-5-2014", Expiration Date is set to "20:25 6-5-2014" and Publication Repeat Interval to "3 days", the content element will be published from 6-5-2014 20:00h - 20:25h, 9-5-2014 20:00h - 20:25h, 12-5-2014 20:00h - 20:25h etc.

Some more examples:

Publish Date Expiration Date Publication Repeat Interval Content element is published
20:00 6-5-2014 20:25 6-5-2014 2 days
20:00-20:25 6-5-2014
20:00-20:25 8-5-2014
20:00-20:25 10-5-2014
etc.
20:00 6-5-2014 8:00 7-5-2014 1 weeks
20:00 6-5-2014 - 8:00 7-5-2014
20:00 13-5-2014 - 8:00 14-5-2014
etc.
13:00 6-5-2014 13:05 6-5-2014 4 hours
13:00-13:05 6-5-2014
17:00-17:05 6-5-2014
21:00-21:05 6-5-2014
etc.

Caveats

As nothing is perfect, there are a few caveats to using this extension:

Page cache lifetime should be smaller than the Publication Repeat Interval

Be sure to set the page cache lifetime to some value smaller than the Publication Repeat Interval. Otherwise, the page is still cached when the content element should be published. There is no way Content Scheduler can invalidate the cache for this page, unfortunately.

Publication duration should be smaller than the Publication Repeat Interval

Be sure to make the publication duration (Expiration Date - Publish Date) smaller than the Publication Repeat Interval. Otherwise, the content element would never get unpublished, since the publication hasn't finished before the next publication kicks in.

Limited repeat schedules

We would love to be able to publish a content element 'every weekday' or 'every Tuesday and Thursday'. But, because of the limitations of the TYPO3 CMS Core in this regard, this is not possible. :(