Noob:Rule to unpublish a custom content based upon a custom "exipration" field

For the other noobs:

Here's how I got it to work. I went and got the scheduler module (http://drupal.org/project/scheduler)
After install/enable, give permissions to schedule content to all the roles that it applies to. (people/permissions/scheduler)

Then go to the specific content type that you are trying to schedule to publish/unpublish.(structure/content types). Edit the content.

At the bottom of the content type screen you will see "scheduler settings." Under "Unpublishing Settings" I checked the boxes for "Enable scheduled unpublishing" and "Unpublishing date/time is required." (I checked the second one because I wanted to require the author to create an unpublish date.

The "Publishing settings" give the author the opportunity to set the content to publish in the future... that's not what I was trying to do though. But they are there if you need them.

When you are checking to see if it works, don't forget to manually run Cron. Because depending on how far apart you have your cron checks set, scheduler won't publish or unpublish anything until the next cron run occurs if you don't do it manually. (configuration/cron/run cron)

Note: if you have the date module installed (http://drupal.org/project/date) then your authors can select the date from the popup calendar that it provides... I hate typing dates.

Hope it helps somebody.

Here's an example of how to use Rules Scheduler for scheduling front page promotion – it should be fairly easy to translate into general publishing/unpublishing: http://skillcompass.org/resource/schedule-front-page-publishing

Good luck!
//Johan Falk, Sweden