Drip Feed Automation

iContentForge's Drip Feed feature automates the publishing of your scheduled articles, simulating a natural, consistent content release schedule. This guide explains how it works and how to configure it.

How Drip Feed Works

The Drip Feed system operates on a simple, efficient principle. Every 5 minutes, a background process checks your project's Content Calendar for any articles that have a scheduled status and a publication time that has passed.

Unlike systems that rely on complex message queues (like Redis), iContentForge uses a scheduled cron-style check directly against your PostgreSQL database. This makes the system more robust and easier to maintain.

1. Check: The system scans for scheduled articles where publish_at <= NOW().
2. Publish: Each qualifying article is sent to its connected CMS via the configured connector.
3. Update: The article's status in iContentForge changes from scheduled to published.

Setting Up Scheduled Publishing

1. Schedule an Article

You can schedule an article for automatic publishing in two places:

• Content Calendar: Click on any article in the calendar view and select "Schedule."
• Article Editor: Open any article with a ready status and click the "Schedule" button.

2. Configure Timezone

It is crucial to set your project's timezone correctly to ensure articles publish at the intended local time.

1. Navigate to your Project Settings.
2. Find the "Timezone" field.
3. Select your preferred timezone from the dropdown list. This timezone applies to all scheduling within the project.

Managing the Drip Feed

Pausing and Resuming

You can temporarily halt automatic publishing without deleting your schedule.

1. Go to your Project Dashboard.
2. Find the "Publishing" card or section.
3. Toggle the "Drip Feed" switch to OFF to pause, or ON to resume.

When paused, the system will skip all scheduled publish checks. Articles will remain in the scheduled state until you resume the Drip Feed or publish them manually.

Important Notes on Timing

• Interval: The system checks for due articles every ~5 minutes.
• Variance: Because it's not a real-time queue, an article scheduled for 10:00 AM may publish anytime between 9:55 AM and 10:05 AM.
• No Queue Dependency: The absence of a separate queue service (like Redis) simplifies infrastructure but is the reason for the ±5 minute variance. This is a deliberate trade-off for reliability.

Next Steps

• Learn how to connect your blog: CMS Integrations
• Organize your publishing plan: Using the Content Calendar
• Understand article statuses: Article Workflow & Statuses