Since you’re using WordPress, try this redirection plugin to manage your URL redirects.

Thanks very much!

One thing I’m confused about though, is I just read a post with a quote from Matt Cutts saying that he thinks the dates should be removed From the URL – http://hackwordpress.com/how-to-setting-up-your-wordpress-permalink-structure/

This post was written 4/2008 but Matt’s quote is from 7/2007…..and the post you linked to from Matt himself sounds like he’s talking about date stamping the post but he’s not talking about the URL structure.

Maybe I’m missing something here but what I’m mainly concerned about is the URL because Google is concerned with it, and I’m getting that Matt says to leave the date out of the URL but to put a date stamp on your posts.

That would be a viable option for time sensitive blogs, what do you think?

I did some research lately for an article about Lego Bionicle masks, and I found a few blogposts. They were posted in 2001.

If there were no dates on them, I might have thought that they were brand new (or maybe not). They only thing I relate to a date of a blogpost is information about when the post was published.

It’s Monday, so it’s time to wrap up the week in blogging. Posts I liked – You may have missed this if you don’t follow my comments, but Cugat posted a link to an article by Michael Pollan, about wh……

I think the best approach with dating your blog is to do what you feel is right for your reader’s needs as well as your own. Maki isn’t wrong for not using dates. And Chris isn’t right for using them. It’s got to be up to each individual to decide. That’s why I think this has been a great conversation – because we’re hearing from all sides.

I’m totally for dating posts as this point with still one sticking point. As you so clearly wrote:

Never give your readers a chance to dismiss your content out of hand just because they see the date and think it’s old before they even read it. They might be missing the answer to the question they’ve been seeking desperately.

For me, I need to think this out a little bit more. Much of my content isn’t date-dependent so I’d certainly love readers to gain from it as it ages. Yet I want to date my posts that are new and fresh. Perhaps there’s a plugin that removes post dates after a time???

However, when I transfered years of content into WordPress, I had to make a decision on the dates, since I had no dates on my static website. It wasn’t important in “those days” unless you were a news website.

Where I could, I put a date in manually, approximating when it was originally published, but dealing with over a thousand posts, it got boring and tedious. So many of them just have a blanket date, or the date when they were imported, not published.

And what does it mean “updated” if all I did was change a “form” to “from”, a minor spelling error fixed, and bingo, the post is “updated”. So what. Does that make the content “updated”?

Again, I say, that if it is critical to have the date prominently featured within the blog’s design, be it on the front page, single post view, or multi-post views, then date it prominently.

If it isn’t, include it in the post meta data, with an updated or modified WordPress Plugin to show if it has indeed been “updated”, and let the content shine and not the date.

Never give your readers a chance to dismiss your content out of hand just because they see the date and think it’s old before they even read it. They might be missing the answer to the question they’ve been seeking desperately.

Any website should be categorized by topic – including static, traditional sites. And the method for organization should meet the needs of the audience much more than the website owner.

Sorry, that’s a lot of ‘shoulds.’ Thought?

George,
Interestingly enough the blog I’ve seen try to make both sides happy has been DoshDosh. And yet Maki is the one taking a lot of the heat. Interesting, huh?

I agree with you that any decision on any website needs to be made with the audience in the front of your mind. After all, you really don’t need your website – your audience does. You know what you know – your audience doesn’t.

Jean,
Yet, I think consistency is important. If you ask the majority of web users, a small minority will be able to tell a blog apart from a traditional website. And then when you combine the two, as I have, the lines get even more blurry. That’s why my thought is to choose one path and be consistent on that path. And like Lorelle, I have no problem with putting the date somewhere small, almost inconsequential somewhere on the post.

It’s a great example of putting the timeless stuff on your website, the dated stuff on your blog.

1. Having dates on posts is not important to some people who read blogs.
2. Having dates on posts is important to some people who read blogs.

Given these two facts, can you as a blogger make both of these groups of people happy or not? Will you lose some of your regular readers if you remove dates from your blog? Will you lose some of your regular readers if you keep dates on your blog? Do your visitors even care about timestamps? How many readers will you lose vs. how many will you gain by dropping dates from your posts?

I think that it would be a good idea to determine answers to questions like these through testing or some other means to determine what your readers really want. Otherwise, you are breaking 2 major rules of marketing, “The customer is always right.” and “Know your market.”

If your don’t care what your visitors want, then none of this really matters anyway.

The only blog designs were built around the date, with the date the most prominent thing on the design. This worked as blogs were online diaries, but it doesn’t work in the real world.

Honestly, does “Links for 07-14-07″ say anything to anyone? The date the links were made but it says nothing about what links are being listed. If I’m searching for information, that’s no help to me. Dates for dates sake are highly overrated.

I have posts that still get comments even though they were written over ten years ago. The information is valid. If someone wants to check “when” it was written, it’s in the post data section as it isn’t title information. So that is dating the post, but it’s not important to the post content.

Look at newspapers and magazines. Do they categorize their content by date? No. They categorize and display their content by title and grouped content. But the date is important to the issue, which is why it is on the cover and part of the header or footers, but it’s not that important to most publications.

Dates are an accessory. Wear them to match your outfit.

I’m in agreement with Maki on how you can effectively not use dates on posts. Sleeping on it last night, however, I feel differently about dating in general.

The reason we’ve been discussing for not dating centers around keeping content relevant to readers. Yet this morning I’ve been thinking that not only do I feel that blog content should be dated, but so should static website content. If I’m looking at a business site and they’re explaining their services to me, I want to know how long ago they’ve updated their copy. That gives me some indication about how they use their website.

I don’t think all blogs should have dates. Though I tend to lean toward having dates rather than not. Yet, I understand why Maki or Darren might not. Thank God there’s enough room on the web/in the blogosphere to have it either way.

Chris nailed it for me, too. The date is a significant piece of info which, when removed, mainly benefits the site owner. It’s a personal choice, of course, but on a blog (or microsite, if we’re dancing), I think it’s fair.

On an old-school, formal site, no date is fine. But I also expect those sites to be more formal: the writing, the topic seletion, etc.

Truthfully, even when I read a static (less-changing, more formal) site–one with essays, or information about a long-dead personality, or whatever–I appreciate a date. Books have publishing dates, and they’re about as formal as it gets.

Yet, I do agree with you that bloggers shouldn’t be penalized for writing great content a couple of years ago. But how do you control reader’s decisions?

And, I also think that dates have some relevance on blog posts. I think they’re valuable to some readers.

So what’s a blogger to do?

He/She could have just removed it because they felt that it was unnecessary or an eyesore. Not everyone is out to game the visitor and deceive them. I don’t see the need to pull ethics into what is primarily a design/optimization issue.

I’m also not talking about self-submitting or promoting your old posts on social websites, just because there isn’t a time-stamp.

I’m talking about social media optimizing your website by increasing the chances of it being disseminated by site visitors through community channels. This is the passive side to social media marketing.

How is this deceptive in anyway? You aren’t bribing or cajoling the reader into promoting your website, which they will only do when the actual content is appealing to them.

Many of Dawud’s posts are not topical and it’ll be a shame if some social media user does not share it on a news site/forum because the timestamp makes him/her think that ‘because its old, therefore it’s less relevant.’

Not using the timestamp can remove that almost instinctive discrimination which comes when one realizes the age of the document.

The timestamp is a visual component of every webpage which affects the immediate opinion of anyone viewing it. It was never anything but an impression, an illusion or whatever you want to call it (Visitors can be ‘manipulated’ even if the timestamp in place, if the blogger uses forward or past dates for articles).

Removing the date is an author-centric decision because it is all about SEO and traffic. That means it is probably about more money coming into the blog author.

Not true. Timestamps are not related to search optimization. And time-stamp removal+social marketing has nothing to do with money unless you integrate it with a monetization strategy (I personally know politico-non profit bloggers who push sites on social websites for exposure and not ad revenue).

It’s also all the things Dawud is talking about here: creating conversations and sharing them with a larger audience. Remember that you’re the one that ultimately decides what type of conversions to pursue for your website.

That’s why discussions/debates like this are useful, I think. Each of us will have some say on the evolution of the blog. Thoughts?

Jean,
Yeah, exactly. And I don’t think anyone here would disagree with you. And, Steve’s blog is different in that he’s writing mostly about issues that aren’t dated. Whereas some writing about the latest version of WordPress would be quite dated when the next version comes out.

What I’m taking away from the this conversation is that there is no one way to use your blog.