Free window: keep new stories open, then gate them

Keep new posts open to everyone for a set number of days after they publish, then let your normal rules take over. Useful when you want breaking news to travel — on social, in search, and in newsletters — while still earning from the archive.

Set it under PaywallProject → Restrictions → Free window (days). 0 turns the window off, which is the default.

How it works

A post is free while:

now < publish date + free window days

After that moment the post gates normally: the metered paywall, the free registration prompt, or the subscribe wall, whichever your settings produce. Nothing is permanently changed about the post — the window is simply a date comparison made on each request.

The publish date is read in GMT, so the boundary does not shift with your site’s timezone or with daylight saving.

What it does and does not cover

The window only relieves posts that are gated by your site-wide rules — the ones restricted because of their post type, category or tag.

It is ignored for posts an editor has deliberately gated:

• Always require subscription — always gates, regardless of age.
• Require specific levels — always gates, regardless of age.

Those two settings are an explicit decision about one post, so they win over a global window. A post set to Always free stays free, as it would anyway.

Access granted for other reasons is unaffected, because those posts are already open: bypassed roles, bypassed categories, verified search engine crawlers and IP exceptions.

Interaction with the meter

While a post sits inside its window it is free to read and does not consume a free article from the reader’s meter allowance. The post is not metered content yet, so nothing is counted against them.

Once the window closes, the post is metered like any other.

Caching

The transition from free to gated happens on a date, not on an edit, so a full-page cache can keep serving the free copy after the window has closed. The page becomes gated when that cache entry is purged or expires.

If you run LiteSpeed, WP Super Cache, W3 Total Cache, Cloudflare or similar, either keep cache lifetimes shorter than your window, or accept that a post may stay open for a little longer than the number you set.

Choosing a number

• 1–3 days suits a daily or breaking-news operation: the story spreads while it is current, then joins the archive.
• 7 days suits a weekly paper, so the current edition is readable and back issues are not.
• 0 disables the window entirely.