Catch up missed articles after pause is a small checkbox in Base data with an outsized impact on your editorial flow. When a campaign is paused (manually or via Blackout dates) and then resumed, the plugin has to decide what to do with the missed publishing slots: pretend they never happened, or queue catch-up generations to fill them in. That decision is what this checkbox controls.
This tutorial explains the setting end-to-end: how catch-up works technically, when to enable and when to disable it, the specific interaction with Live News Mode, and the operational tips to prevent catch-up floods on long pauses.
Where the checkbox lives
In the campaign editor, open Base data. Below Active days and Blackout dates you’ll find a single checkbox labelled Catch up missed articles after pause. Its state is per-campaign — each campaign decides independently.
How catch-up works technically
When a campaign resumes from any kind of pause (Pause button, Blackout end, plugin reactivation), the plugin computes the number of publishing slots that fell during the pause. Articles per day × pause days = slots missed.
If catch-up is enabled, those N missed slots get queued for generation, one per interval starting immediately after resume. If disabled, they’re forgotten — the campaign picks up on the next scheduled slot as if nothing happened.
When to enable catch-up
- Cornerstone tutorial campaigns — you have a specific title queue and want every title published. Missing three slots means three tutorials that never made it live.
- Short blackouts (1–3 days) — catch-up ramps 3 extra articles over the following days. Manageable, doesn’t flood the feed.
- Manual pauses for maintenance — you paused to fix something. Resume with catch-up on to reclaim what you would have published.
When to disable catch-up
- News campaigns — stale news isn’t news. If you missed three days of breaking coverage, publishing them a week later dilutes credibility. Better to skip.
- Long blackouts (5+ days) — a two-week pause would queue 30+ catch-up articles on a 3-per-day campaign. That’s a flood the feed can’t absorb.
- Blackout dates specifically chosen to reduce output — you paused because you wanted less publishing, not more later.
Interaction with Live News Mode
For Live News Mode campaigns, catch-up interacts with the News search window. When the campaign resumes with catch-up enabled, the plugin looks back at the pause period and queues generations for items that would have been fetched — but only if those items are still inside the News search window.
If the pause was longer than the News search window (typically 24–48 hours), catch-up effectively does nothing on news campaigns even if enabled. The items are already too old to still be in the feed. This is by design: catches too-old news from getting into the queue.
Step 1 — Decide the default per campaign
For every campaign in your calendar, decide once: catch-up on or catch-up off. Base the decision on the content type.
- Evergreen tutorials: ON.
- Weekend deep-dives: ON.
- Daily news summaries: OFF.
- Realtime alert campaigns: OFF.
Step 2 — Override for specific long blackouts
Even on catch-up-ON campaigns, temporarily disable catch-up before a known long blackout, then re-enable after resume. Example: for a two-week August holiday you disable catch-up before pausing so the September restart doesn’t drown in September’s own titles plus August’s backlog.
Remember to re-enable after the resume; otherwise the setting stays off and a smaller future pause loses its catch-up behaviour.
Step 3 — Watch the queue after resume
Open the Content calendar the day after resume. Count the scheduled slots for the current week. If catch-up added more articles than the reader feed can absorb, cancel the catch-up individually (right-click the extra slots and delete them from the calendar).
The plugin doesn’t cap catch-up on its own — that’s your editorial judgement. Two weeks × 3 articles/day = 42 catch-up posts is usually too many; pruning to 10–15 makes the resume week feel busy but manageable.
Troubleshooting
- Catch-up enabled but no articles queued after resume — either the title queue is empty, or (for Live News Mode) the items expired. Add titles or shorten pause next time.
- Catch-up floods the queue — pause was too long. Manually trim.
- Catch-up creates articles with outdated dates in the body — Extra AI instructions should include “Always use current date, never dates from before now”.
- Catch-up ignores Blackout dates — as intended. Blackouts don’t apply retroactively.
You’re done
That’s the Catch up setting: one checkbox, per campaign, decides whether missed slots get reclaimed or forgotten. Enable for cornerstone content, disable for news, override temporarily around known long blackouts, watch the queue after resume and prune if needed.