Showing Dates Not Just Times in Your Multi-Post Views
Occasionally when I’m searching the web, I’m looking for timely information such as articles on WordPress 2.1 not WordPress 1.5. Information on the latest version of WordPress would be dated within the past two months or so. Anything before that probably covers early versions of WordPress and wouldn’t apply to the topic I’m seeking.
More often than not, instead of the date, I find the time of the post with no date reference obviously visible. What is this? Why bother? Does the time of the post help the reader in any way?
The time and date are part of a post’s meta data and is usually included in the post meta data section at the bottom of the single post view. Some put the date and/or time meta data just above or under the post title, which is appropriate for time sensitive posts. But why do so many WordPress Themes only include the time and not the date?
Or they will give the date but not the year. That’s not much help either if the “when” is important to the validity of the article.
As I hunt around looking for the date, I will often find it WAY above the title, or at the top of a list of posts on multi-post views like categories, tags, archives, or search results, grouping the resulting posts under a single date. In theory, this is a neat idea, but in practice, how would I know to hunt for the “group date” unless the design format really emphasizes it?
If you write timely posts with “expiration date” content, take time right now to go through the various page views on your WordPress blog to see how the date and time are featured. Are you providing the right information your readers want and need?
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Monday, June 25th, 2007 at 1:13 pm under
