AutoClose Metabox and Close Dates

The AutoClose metabox on the post edit screen lets you schedule a specific date and time to close comments, pingbacks, or trackbacks on a single post. This is useful for evergreen posts you want to keep open for a known window, or for announcements whose comment period ends on a fixed date.

Where the metabox appears

The AutoClose Settings metabox appears on the post edit screen for any public post type that supports comments — posts, pages, attachments, and any custom post type that has supports => array( 'comments' ) in its registration. It does not appear on post types that do not support comments.

Fields

Close comments on

Date and time at which comments should close on this post. Leave blank to leave comments open indefinitely (subject to the global close age).

Close pingbacks/trackbacks on

Date and time at which pingbacks and trackbacks should close on this post. Leave blank to leave pings open indefinitely (subject to the global close age).

The two fields are independent: you can close comments on a specific date and let pingbacks run, or vice versa. Both fields are also independent of the post’s existing comment_status and ping_status — they schedule a future action, they do not toggle the post’s status immediately.

How the scheduled close works

When you save the post, the plugin stores both date fields as post meta:

• _acc_comments_date for the close-comments date.
• _acc_pings_date for the close-pings date.

A single hourly autoclose_close_dates_event sweep applies every due date on the site, so the close happens at the first sweep after the time you set rather than to the exact minute. If the configured date is already in the past when you save the post, the close runs immediately on save.

Once a date has been applied the field is cleared, because the close has already happened. Change either date and re-save and the new date replaces the old one — there are no per-post events to go stale.

Interaction with the global scheduled close

The metabox stores a date for a specific post, applied by the hourly close-date sweep. It runs alongside, not in place of, the global acc_cron_hook that closes comments by age. If the global cron closes comments on a post before the metabox date arrives, the sweep will not re-open them. The metabox schedules the close; it does not protect against an earlier bulk close.

If you want a post to keep its comments open until a specific date, the cleanest approach is to:

1. Add the post ID to Comments → Keep comments on these posts/pages open in the settings, so the global cron leaves it alone.
2. Use the metabox to set the close date.

Email and Tools page behavior

The metabox does not send any notification when the scheduled close fires. The summary email from Settings → General → Send summary email after cron run only reports the bulk cron activity, not metabox-scheduled closes. The Tools → AutoClose Tools page does not read the metabox date fields — its buttons run the bulk actions and respect only the global settings and the keep-open post ID lists.