Forum: Author Hangout

New Query: What time is best of posting

Vincent Berg 🚫

Driven by a personal dilemma, I posed a question online about when is it best to post stories (something we've discussed on the site many times (years ago)).

After quite a few responses, it turns out: it don't matter. Between the 2 to 5 day limit ("Free" vs. "Premium") limit on "New" and "Updated" story lists and the RSS feeds, it really doesn't matter, even though there IS a definite 7+ hour delay in the automated posting vs. waiting to post after SOL shuts down for the evening (though the same delay doesn't seem to apply to posting during the day).

As I suspected, most readers are either retired, disabled or both, and read throughout the day, but they can easily access the story whenever they want. I still believe in posting on specific days (specifically avoiding posting on Saturdays, since you get bumped off the "New Stories" page almost immediately), but the actual posting time doesn't seem to impact readers much.

Replies: Lazeez Jiddan (Webmaster)

Lazeez Jiddan (Webmaster)

@Vincent Berg

Between the 2 to 5 day limit ("Free" vs. "Premium") limit on "New" and "Updated" story lists and the RSS feeds, it really doesn't matter, even though there IS a definite 7+ hour delay in the automated posting vs. waiting to post after SOL shuts down for the evening (though the same delay doesn't seem to apply to posting during the day).

One correction. For free members the limit on the new stories page is not 5 days. It's 50 stories. So if nothing gets posted for a day nothing gets bumped off. And if 30 stories are posted in one day, then 30 stories get bumped off.

As for posting times, I'll explain how the site work so that you would understand.

Currently, there are two moderators. Myself and Vixen. We don't really take turns, we both check the three posting queues regularly throughout the day. We process whatever we find. So if you happen to upload something while we're checking the queue, the submission gets posted within a minute or two from uploading.

We're both in the Eastern Timezone, so when we go to sleep around midnight, nothing gets posted until morning.

As for the delayed postings, they show up in our queue at 8pm Eastern on the designated day and if we happen to be looking at the queue, all delayed submissions get processed at that time. But most times it is before 9pm Eastern.

Generally, I wouldn't worry too much about posting time. As you said, there are readers everywhere on the globe. It's the ideal time for some and never ideal for others, plus there are plenty of night owls or really early risers amongst the elderly who comprise a large proportion of the site visitors.

Replies: Vincent Berg

Vincent Berg 🚫

@Lazeez Jiddan (Webmaster)

As for the delayed postings, they show up in our queue at 8pm Eastern on the designated day and if we happen to be looking at the queue, all delayed submissions get processed at that time. But most times it is before 9pm Eastern.

Generally, I wouldn't worry too much about posting time. As you said, there are readers everywhere on the globe. It's the ideal time for some and never ideal for others, plus there are plenty of night owls or really early risers amongst the elderly who comprise a large proportion of the site visitors.

That's fine, as I said, readers don't seem to object, and they can find the story whenever it's available, but I'm concerned that you say the story queue is cleared, yet I've found a consistent 7+ hour delay with scheduled posts. I'm not sure how that might occur except for a bug in the system.

If I post during the day, or before midnight, the post goes up almost immediately. If I post after midnight (12:30a.m. to be sure you didn't stay late), it posts FIRST thing in the morning, before anything else (including stories sitting in the queue for weeks).

However, if I post it, scheduling it to be delivered at a future date (either the next day, or in a week) it typically won't post until 4p.M. EST, despite you clearing the submission queues.

Something's not adding up. There may be a bug in how the scheduled submissions are processed.

However, the priority on this is relatively low, since I don't think many authors will worry about it as long as they eventually get posted.

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Forum: Author Hangout

New Query: What time is best of posting

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