After my switch from WordPress to Pelican I realized that there was one feature that I really was missing, the ability to schedule posts in the future. When you have an itch, you scratch it. By using my Linux box at home (you could use an OS X machine also) and Dropbox, I can now schedule posts.
Prequisites
On my server I set up Dropbox. There is a script on the Dropbox site that allows you to set it up on headless servers (a server without a monitor, keyboard, or mouse). In my DropBox folder, I created a folder called ToPost.
The script
You’ll need to adjust the path to TOPOST and to the SITE.
#!/bin/bash
TOPOST=~/Dropbox/Elements/RyanCollins.org/ToPost/*.markdown
SITE=~/Development/ryancollins.org
shopt -s nullglob
YEAR=`date +%Y`
NOW=`date +"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M"`
for file in ${TOPOST}
do
DATELINE=`cat "${file}" | grep "^Date: "`
if [[ ${DATELINE#* } < ${NOW} ]]; then
mv "${file}" "${SITE}/content/${YEAR}"
cd "${SITE}"
make rsync_upload
fi
done
Scheduling
At the command prompt, run crontab with the -e parameter so we can add a scheduled job:
ryan@serverbot:~$ crontab -e
and add a line to our script to run it every 15 minutes:
*/15 * * * * /home/ryan/Development/ryancollins.org/dbupdate.sh
Like many districts, my district is looking at devices for a 1:1
