Changing the Date for a Post

This article is about how to change the date of a post in Blogger.  It looks at where the date value is found, and what format is used to display and edit it.

Where is the post date (date/time) value kept?

Each Post (not but each Page) that you create in Blogger has a date and time associated with it.

• You can see the date (but not the time) in the Posts (new interface) or  Edit Posts (old interface) tab.

• You can see the date and time in the Post Editor, by clicking on Post Options link (old interface) or the Published on link (right-hand sidebar in the new interface):

  
How to set the post date (date/time) value

To change the date (or date-time) value for a Post:

1  Open the Post in the Post Editor


2  Click the Post Options link, which is near the bottom left of the page above the Publish button (old interface) or the Published on link (in the right-hand sidebar in the new interface):

This opens up the window to show various options that apply to the post.   The date-time is on the right.

Initially, the date-time is set to Automatic:  the post will be given a date-time when the Publish Post button is clicked for the first time.

3  Tick the Scheduled option (old interface) or Set date and time (new interface), which lets you edit the date.


Understanding the Date format:

Blogger does not (currently) have an option that lets you set the format of the date that is shown in the Post Options window:  the date-format under Settings / Formatting tab applies to inside posts only.

Therefore in the old (ie pre-Sept-2011) version of Blogger the date value you will see is in American date format.  This has:

• the month value first, 
• then the day value
• then the year value

To change the date, you need to use the same order.  For example, to set the date to 3 December 2009,

• the 12 goes first
• then the 3
• then the 09 for 2009

In the new (ie post Sept-2011) version of Blogger, they've removed the need to compensate for American date formats.  

Instead, we're shown a calendar to pick the date from, and it's displayed in with the year first,  So, for example, 2009-12-03 is shown for 3 December 2009.

Unfortunately this makes choosing a date sometime in the past difficult.   For example to set the date back to 1998 (which I've had to do recently for a historic blog about a choir), you need to do a lot of clicking.   And to make matters worse, when I tried it a couple of weeks ago the selected date value wasn't actually applied.   Hopefully this is something they'll fix soon.

Why set the date?

You may want to set the date if you are giving your blog a home page, or if you want to schedule a post to go live at some time in the future.


Is any other date information kept in Blogger?

You can work out the month and year when a post was first published by looking at its URL: this contains the original publication month and year.  For example, the URL of this post is

http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2009/12/changing-date-for-post.html

The bolded bit says that it was originally published in December (ie the 12th month) of 2009.   This URL is kept even if I change the values in "Post Date and Time"   (which I'm just about to do, to show when the article was last updated).

I think it's likely that Blogger also stores the exact publication date and time somewhere too (at least, to help them resolve DMCA copyright complaints), but don't know any way to access this.

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Related Articles: 



The difference between Posts and Pages

Giving your blog a home page

Making one post always come up first

Taking action when someone has copied your blog