The ExpirationDate WordPress Plugin

This plugin has been revised to be the Atropos WordPress plugin, which provides a better interface. Please upgrade and use that one instead.

The ExpirationDate plugin lets you set a deletion date for your posts (and pages).

To set an expiration date, you add a custom field called “Expiration Date” (no quotes) with the deletion date as the value. The date should be in YYYY/MM/DD format.

Important Note: The expired posts/pages are DELETED. Be sure that you want to do this. I disavow any responsibility if you delete your entire blog because you weren’t being careful.

Example

Suppose you want to delete a post on November 18, 2008. You would scroll down to the Custom Fields section of the Write/Edit Post screen and enter “Expiration Date” and “2008/11/18″ like this:

After it is set, it will look like this:

Caveat

This plugin uses WordPress’s cron feature. This allows you to set a time for things to happen, such as deleting a post. All well and good, except that it doesn’t actually happen until someone looks at a page AFTER that time. And then it takes a few seconds to actually happen. The net result for this plugin is that expired posts will still be there for the first page view of the deletion day and possibly several more if there is a lot of traffic around midnight. The post will be deleted, but not precisely at midnight. Such is WordPress’s cron.