Being a widely popular platform, WordPress is used by millions of bloggers as a blogging platform. If you are a blogger, there is a probability that you might be confused with the customization of date on your posts. The presence of date on your blog is active by default, but you can customize to display or remove it as per your preferences.
In this article, we’d like to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of WordPress post date on your blog, and tell you how to display or remove it.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Post Date
Advantage or disadvantage depends upon the frequency and consistency of your blog posts. If you update your blog with new posts regularly, it can be an advantage if you display the date. The date can inform your visitors about your regularity and consistency of your blog.
On the contrary, if you are not regularly active through your blog, you should prefer removing the date because visitors are not amused by irregularity of posts. Overall, the advantage or disadvantage of post date depends solely on your activities through the blog.
Displaying Post Date on Your WordPress Site
Displaying the date on every post is a default feature in the majority of WordPress themes. Most of the themes offer a layout allowing the date of only the most recent post to be displayed, followed by the title and content of the rest of the posts. This format is preferred by many bloggers who update multiple posts every day. But, if you want to display the date of all the posts on your blog, there is an effective solution that can be implemented easily.
There are two methods of displaying the date on each of your posts. Under the first method, you can show the date once in the entire list of posts updated in one day. On the other hand, the second method allows you to show the date in every post.
Although both the methods are almost similar, the only difference existing between the two is a slight change in code. You should use the “the_date” in the code for displaying the date only in the most recent post while “the_time” should be used to display the date in every post. Given below are the codes for both the customizations of date.
Code for displaying date once:
After using the desired code, you should go to the General page available in the Settings menu of your WordPress site. Here, you need to customize the format of date and time.
You can find something like “Fj, Y” in the custom section of the date format. This resembles that the date can be shown only once. If you use the “the_time” code, you can find something like “g:i a” that adds a timestamp on every post. You can alter the code to “Fj, Y” to display every WordPress post date.
Removing the Post Date from Your WordPress Site
Not everyone likes to show the post dates on their blogs. If you belong to this category, you can follow any of the several effective measures. Discussed here are the available methods of removing WordPress post date from your blog.
Removing Post Date Using Plugin
As plugins are the most preferred technique of removing post date, you can download and install the plugin to cut down the manual labor. To remove the date from your posts, all you need to do is to install and activate an effective plugin such as WP Post Date Remover. This plugin automatically removes the date from the posts, pages and homepage.
Although this plugin has not been updated since 2012, the tool works fairly well in removing the date. The only loophole in this plugin is that it does not remove the clock from some advanced themes such as the Twenty Thirteen and Twenty Fourteen themes. If you are using a similar theme with which the plugin is not working appropriately, you can try out the manual method as well as the coding method.
Removing Post Date Using Manually
This is relatively the lengthiest process among the three methods of removing post date from your blog. However, it is followed by many developers because it involves manual configurations only.
First of all, you need to open the directory that contains the source files of your WordPress themes. Now, go to the Editor presented in the Appearance menu and open a blog post source files. This task might be a bit tricky if you don’t know the exact location where this file is present.
The source file is located in the file named as “Single.php”. Once you find the source file, search for the date function and delete it. This can remove the date from all the future posts on your WordPress blog.
Removing Post Date Using Code
Although tremendous numbers of newbies avoid the use of codes, this is the most effectual method for removing post date from your WordPress site. All you need to do is to create a child theme on your site and use the following code on the newly created sheet.
Using the code cannot only remove the default date from your posts but can also erase the presence of clocks from the advanced themes. It is the most recommendable method because it doesn’t bargain with the performance of your website.
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