I accidentally moved an entry in a Structure section
There are a couple of reasons this can happen, and understanding how Craft CMS handles future post dates will help clarify the expected behaviour.
The entry was saved as enabled
When you save an entry with its status set to Enabled, Craft CMS sets the post date to the current time by default if you have not explicitly set a future date before saving. If you saved the entry as enabled first and then changed the post date afterwards, the entry may already have been published at the point it was saved.
To schedule an entry to go live at a future date, you should set the post date to a future date and time before saving- or keep the entry disabled until you are ready for it to go live.
The difference between a future post date and disabled
Setting a future post date on an enabled entry gives it a Pending status. A Pending entry will not appear in standard listing pages or search results, as those only show entries with a Live status. However, a Pending entry is still accessible to anyone who navigates directly to its URL. If you need the page to be completely inaccessible until a specific date, you should keep the entry disabled rather than relying solely on a future post date.
The post date may have been set to the wrong time
The CMS is configured to the Europe/London timezone. If you entered a time without accounting for British Summer Time- or entered a time in AM/PM format where 24-hour was expected- the post date may have resolved to a time that has already passed. Double-check the post date and time on the entry to confirm it is set to the correct future date.
The page cache may have captured the entry
If your site's static cache ran shortly after the entry was saved as Pending, it is possible a cached version of a listing page was generated that included the entry before it was filtered out. This is uncommon but can occur in edge cases. If you believe this has happened, contact your site administrator to clear the cache.
The entry was saved as enabled
When you save an entry with its status set to Enabled, Craft CMS sets the post date to the current time by default if you have not explicitly set a future date before saving. If you saved the entry as enabled first and then changed the post date afterwards, the entry may already have been published at the point it was saved.
To schedule an entry to go live at a future date, you should set the post date to a future date and time before saving- or keep the entry disabled until you are ready for it to go live.
The difference between a future post date and disabled
Setting a future post date on an enabled entry gives it a Pending status. A Pending entry will not appear in standard listing pages or search results, as those only show entries with a Live status. However, a Pending entry is still accessible to anyone who navigates directly to its URL. If you need the page to be completely inaccessible until a specific date, you should keep the entry disabled rather than relying solely on a future post date.
The post date may have been set to the wrong time
The CMS is configured to the Europe/London timezone. If you entered a time without accounting for British Summer Time- or entered a time in AM/PM format where 24-hour was expected- the post date may have resolved to a time that has already passed. Double-check the post date and time on the entry to confirm it is set to the correct future date.
The page cache may have captured the entry
If your site's static cache ran shortly after the entry was saved as Pending, it is possible a cached version of a listing page was generated that included the entry before it was filtered out. This is uncommon but can occur in edge cases. If you believe this has happened, contact your site administrator to clear the cache.