Automating Publish and Unpublish in the Future

Normally, a published node is visible immediately and until deleted or manually unpublished. This is probably what you want most of the time, even for time-sensitive information like an event - the interface takes care of displaying it appropriately.

There may be times when you don't want a node to be visible until a certain date/time, for example with a press release. Or you may have a piece of information that you want removed after a certain period of time because it won't be true anymore (e.g. a resource that is time-limited).

In those cases, you'll want to use the "Schedule" feature, which is found on all node editing pages of nodes for which the feature is enabled. You must also have the required permissions.

In this case, towards the bottom of the form, you'll see the "Schedule" section which has two empty fields that you can fill in for automated publish and unpublish.

What this does is check and uncheck the publish status on those dates.