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Changing The Post Date

When you write posts in your blog, generally you'll want them to show the date / time when they were written.

A blog is a journal, and sometimes you will want to insert posts with a different date.
  • You may want a post to show a future date, to bring it to the top of the blog.
  • You may want a post to show a past date, to reflect a past experience. Or maybe you want to make a new post, and keep it off the main page, as a separate section of the blog.
  • Maybe you want all of the posts to be in forward chronological order, instead of (normal) reverse chronological order.

The default date / time, for any new post, is today / now.

You can change the date / time of any post, any time it suits you. You'll do this by editing each post, one at a time, from the "Posts" menu, which will put you into the Post Editor.

Note that if you want a single post, pinned to the top of the main page, you can add a Featured Post, installed using the dashboard Layout page.

A published post must be reverted to Draft status.

To change the date when editing any post, first revert the post to Draft status.

Use the post editor "Published on" wizard, to change a Draft post publish date.

With the post in Draft status, look for the "Post settings" menu in the post editor display. Below "Post settings", click on the "Published on" entry, then (if necessary) "Set date and time". That will give you a GUI control, where you enter / select the appropriate date and time - then hit "Done".

With the publish date changed, re publish the post.

Then, just Publish Post - or Update. When you hit Publish Post or Update, your post will be re published, with the new date.

If you give the post a posting date in the future, it will be scheduled for future posting - or it will post now, and it will be displayed above any posts with an previous date - depending upon whether you Publish the post after, or before, changing the post date.

If you want to continually post, with each newer post appearing below the previous post, just successively back date each post. Keep track of the post date for each previous post, and make the next post one day (one hour, one minute) earlier.

If the post URL changes, use a custom redirect to let the old URL work.

If you change the date of any post, when it's published, so it falls into a different month and / or year, the URL of the post will change. This will give you a post with a new URL - and old broken links to the post.

If you change the post date, you should add a custom redirect, from the old URL to the new URL. This will let your readers - and the search engines - continue to access the post using the new date, under the new URL.

Comments

Alanna Kellogg said…
Yes. BUT ... any time you change the date, you'll screw up any permalinks and search engine references.
Astrid said…
Thanks!! I just can't believe it was that easy!!! I've been wondering about it for such a long time!
Stevens-family said…
I have been trying to change some posts around, but cannot find the "post option" link on my site. Please help - what am I doing wrong??
Anette
Jai Anand said…
Your post is very good. Let me try it out.
'Maybe you want all of the posts to be in forward chronological order, instead of (normal) reverse chronological order.....'

I still have not discovered, with this entry, how to resolve this problem.

I want my entry to read oldest to newest - the dates are also significant for me to keep, they are unflexible.

How do I get the blog laid out oldest entry first to newest entry last?
Nitecruzr said…
1) Change all the dates so the oldest posts have the newest dates.
2) Hide the post dates.
3) Display the actual dates, as regular text, with whatever values you wish.
How do you hide the post date? Sorry if this is a simple question...new to this site. Thanks!
Nitecruzr said…
Shane,

The post date is one of the options selected in the post template options wizard.
Christina G. said…
I had been wondering about this!
Would much rather show oldest post first, thanks for this info! I'm not sure I 'get' it, but probably will after re-reading and trying it out...thanks again...

Christina
http://godhistoryandyou.blogspot.com/
EtonaLife said…
That's somewhat ridiculous. Sure it's an easy method, but it's obnoxious. I like knowing dates, and the programing to add the option can't be hard. Anyways, thanks for the info. Maybe we can make Google perform better.
Wendy said…
I am sorry to be a pain but I cannot find where to turn off the date/time feature. I have changed the dates so that my post appear in correct chronological order but it still says the day I posted them. How do I remove this?
Thanks for your help and patience.

Wendy
Nitecruzr said…
Wendy,

You turn off the date / time display, in the posts, using the Blog Posts widget in Page Elements.
Wery good and clear explanation. Exactly what I need to know^^
Thanks!
5windsOfvenus said…
Thank-you!!
Very clear!!
I appreciate your work...

Cheers;
April-Anna
http://theartofapril-anna.blogspot.com/
Anonymous said…
This is the most backward solution I've ever seen! Surely there is a better way! They can't throw a ASC into the ORDER BY clause for the dates? Seriously?
MZ EXPRESS said…
This is the most backward solution I've ever seen! Surely there is a better way! They can't throw a ASC into the ORDER BY clause for the dates? Seriously?

Seriously or Blogger xD
Nitecruzr said…
Hey Express,

A very good idea. Suggest this to Blogger!
MZ EXPRESS said…
Hey Chuck!

Ain't no more Wish list XD
MZ EXPRESS said…
I'm your reader as you see...

Blogger don't like more of our greaTEST ideas or Blogger goes like Pages O_O?
Nitecruzr said…
Blogger is always changing. Not always for the better. 8-(
MZ EXPRESS said…
Yep :(

Thanks for your job, it's really good.

(Were is my wish "I wish upload JS and CSS files"? XD)
Malfred said…
Many thanks for your help. You are so unselfish and it's such a help.
LittleMeTG said…
Please make note that changing the date of the posts (mainly backdating posts so that the welcome post shows up first) will affect the search widget. In a nut shell, those posts becomes "unsearchable". This happened to me. Had to repost all my posts on my blog to make it searchable. Important because my blog is more informative type of blog. It's a great fix if you don't need to search your blog though!
Jack Lattimore said…
Yes! I was looking at solutions posted years ago and it seemed really difficult. Thank you!
Judith said…
Chuck, I found your site over at Blogger Help. I want to change a post to a future date in order to pin a blog to the top. I can't find out how to do it. Most responses to this problem are old so I am wondering if this has changed. I'm a newbie. Judith
Nitecruzr said…
Hi Judith,

Thanks for your question - and welcome to RBS based problem solving!

To change the post publish date, you must (now) first revert the post to Draft status. That will give you the post editor "Published on" wizard, with the right options.

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2015/01/change-post-to-draft-to-change-post-url.html

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