Builds / General

Scheduling

Scheduling allows you to define when your site is built automatically. There are two types of scheduled builds:

1. Manually configured builds
2. Automatic builds configured from site source

---

Manual Builds

Manually configured builds or Manual builds are configured in the CloudCannon UI. They are useful for regular period builds or one off future builds.

To configure a manual build:

1. Go to Site Settings / Scheduled Builds
2. Select the Manual tab
3. Add a name
4. Enter the date for the build to first run
5. If you want the build to repeat on a regular interval, select a Repeat Interval
6. Click Create Schedule to create a scheduled build.

Repeat Intervals work from the original date selected. If you select a daily interval and your original time was 2pm, all future builds will run at 2pm.

To remove a build:

1. Go to Site Settings / Scheduled Builds
2. Select the Manual tab
3. Click Cancel on your selected build and then click again to confirm

---

Automatic builds

Automatic builds are configured by generating a _schedule.txt file in your Jekyll site. After a build CloudCannon will read your _schedule.txt file and automatically configure a build at the specified time. This is useful for future posts and any build that uses site.time.

Installation

To generate _schedule.txt we recommend using our plugin, jekyll-cloudcannon-schedule. This will parse all posts set for the future and generate a build on that date. If you would like to generate a custom file, see below for schedule file format.

Add the following to your Gemfile:

group :jekyll_plugins do
  gem 'jekyll-cloudcannon-schedule', '0.1.2'
end

Add the following to your _config.yml:

plugins:
  - jekyll-cloudcannon-schedule

If you are using a Jekyll version less than 3.5.0, use the gems key instead of plugins.

Viewing automatic builds

Once the plugin is configured, the site will be built automatically at the date of any future post. To view all available automatic builds:

1. Go to Site Settings / Scheduled Builds
2. Select the Automatic tab
3. Clicking Update will open the source filename in the content editor

This is useful when configuring your initial plugin setup.

Posts that are visible on the main site will not trigger a build. If automatic builds are not working, ensure –future is unchecked in Site Settings / Build.

Schedule File Format

The _schedule.txt is a comma separated list of values. It contains three values:

1. Run date
2. Build name
3. Source filename

For example:

2020-10-22T10:00:00+00:00,Publish Post,_posts/2020-10-22-because-of-the-internet.md

These values are used to schedule a build and generate the management UI.

If you’re creating _schedule.txt without the jekyll-cloudcannon-schedule plugin you will need to add the file to your include in _config.yml as Jekyll doesn’t process files beginning with an underscore by default.