Thoughts on writing timeless blog posts and post bylines

I think moving the byline with date to the bottom is a good move for any blog that isn't focused on providing news. I'll probably switch to this on my blogs, haven't had much time to blog lately though, working on building a couple products. Good post.

I've actually done the same thing on my blog. I show the date on the main page so people can see that it is being updated every day but I don't show the date on the post page so that anyone who stumbles upon it will see it and not be distracted by an old date.

This is a nice post. I think this works great for blogs that are more like micro-sites, and in fact that is more like what I want. Like a site of resources. I've followed the instructions and removed the byline, now to see how the custom function works out.

Hi Marco,

Good idea, I was going to remove the dates from my blog, only laziness stops me. The whole idea of timeless content is from the Steve Pavlina school of blogging and it's obviously worked for him.

By the way nice use of internal linking.

Having read the comments I think if you move the author, date written etc to the bottom of the post it doesn't necessarily date the article, because the reader will have read, or at least scanned the post first.

If the date is on the top of the post then, of course, the date is almost as significant as the post. To some extent I like to have a date on the bottom of a post, so that I can see how my writing has developed, or deteriorated.

Got it, had to use:
function custom_byline() {
if (is_single()) {
?>

Post written on <abbr class=”published”><?php echo get_the_time('Y-m-d'); ?></abbr>

<?php
}
}
add_action('thesis_hook_after_post', 'custom_byline');

Definitely. Revisiting your old posts, and updating them with current information is the way to go. Those old posts still get a lot of views from Google searches etc.

I like the general idea of this post and agree with much of it. I do however significantly disagree with the commentary about “chasing page views”.

I am a firm believer of the pure mathematics of it, and the bottom line is that more views = more money. As long as you want to make more money doing what you love.

In Thesis you can use teasers on front page like I do, and you can easily select date in the teasers byline without changing your actual blog post byline. It is all located in Thesis interface.

I have the date at the end of the post. So they will read it, and later see that it is an old post. And this is only on posts, not on my homepage.
But what you are saying is a good point too. When you don't have dates at all, they won't look at if it is a new, relevant, article. Only if it brings value to them.

Also, I'm compelled to mention that Lisa Irby rocks One of the hardest working bloggers and entrepreneurs out there.

Definitely. And she is really good at using video to differentiate herself.

Of course. The whole point is though that people do focus on dates. So a post like this one that you just commented on, it shouldn't matter if you read it today or you read it in 5 months. The content will be just as valuable.

The problem though is that a person that reads this in December 2009 and sees that the post was written in July 2009, he might find it less attractive and decide to look for something “fresh” without giving it a chance.

Nothing to do with hiding the date, just putting focus on the content itself and not giving the date as one of the first things people see.

Marko, Interesting insights. I've thought about this lately in relation to my blog as well as in relation to the various web sites I frequent. My thinking is that the relevance of byline and date may depend on the type of content being created.

On one hand I completely agree with the idea that there is a lot of really interesting and useful content where the “age” is not a limiting factor in terms of how useful or relevant it is. For instance if I'm looking for info on how to become a better writer I could find something 10 or even 30 years old that may be more useful than something created six months ago.

However there are also plenty of cases, especially in tech-related areas, where I do want to know when the given content or post was created. For instance if I'm reading information about Google PageRank I believe there is a lot of relevance knowing if the information was created in 2005 or 2009. So the creation date can be much more relevant in areas that change rapidly.

On posts Where there is no date listed in the byline I sometimes find myself scrolling to the bottom and the comments section to see the dates of the comments to provide additional context to the post. But that again depends on the focus of the post.

No one clear answer for all situations but you provide some excellent food for more thought. Great post. Thanks.

Nevermind found it.

The above code does work however you must have a nickname listed in your profile.

Users>Profile>Nickname.