Readers Respond: Do you date your web content? Why or why not?

Do you put dates on your web page content? Why or why not? Are there specific types of content that you put dates on while others you don't? Find out what other About.com readers do when deciding upon using dates on their web pages and share your own thoughts about dates on web pages.

I only put dates on blog posts and time-sensitive content like events and reviews. Otherwise, I leave the dates off of my pages and instead focus on revisiting them periodically to make sure that they are still correct and useful.

dates are important

I don't date my articles, mostly because it is customary not to. I will do so from now on. ############################################################################ Just to be clear--if you had read the full article, you might change your mind and go back to not dating everything. Dating articles is a good idea in some situations and a bad one in others.

—Guest Anonymous

Include dates? -- Yes!

Yes, I put a date on every web page I generate, so that visitors can see for themselves when the page was last updated. Old information may be still valuable, or not. If the information is out of date, I will update the page, or remove it. Visitors can assume that every page with an old date still has currently useful information. I think leaving dates off of web pages is dishonest. Visitors deserve to know when the page they are looking at was generated, and when its content was updated.

—rgaryr

Must Have Dates

I agree that some web sites do not need to display dates but they are in the minority. Too many people try to fob off years old content as current. When I see an undated article, I always feel the information is stale.

—Guest The Big Cheese

Dated content

It is frustrating to not be able to tell how old an article is...if I need the most current, most up to date, and I'm looking at a five year old webpage someone is passing off as current, it does me no good. I am reluctant to recommend a dateless webpage to my friends...I don't want them to be led astray by old information. I look to find the most current information unless I'm on an archaeological dig or seeing archival material. It's not that hard to figure out...if I return to a site and the webpage hasn't change, the trick of not having a date becomes revealed fairly quickly and you go on my "do not bother to return" list. ##### From Jennifer: out of curiosity, does that mean that you wouldn't recommend an article about, say, the P tag, that was included in HTML 2.0 in 1995, and so conceivably could have articles about it from 1995. If there were a date on that article, it might say September 22, 1995, which is over 10 years old. But the information about the P tag is still relevant. Having a date on the page makes the document look LESS accurate because it's from so long ago. http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html-spec/html-spec_5.html#SEC5.5.1

—Guest Lynne

Have to carefully consider what to date

In general I think your article does a reasonable job of providing guidelines on what can be undated and what should be dated. The thing is, I think that this "date divide" can be a very subjective thing. Your example of HTML coding techniques is a good one. Sure, if you are right you are right. But I find that having dates at least gives me some context. And yes, I may put relatively more weight on newer content, but as a user I want the option of making that judgment. Because, eventually pretty well all advice does become dated. Actually, I would put more importance on a dated 10 year old article, that had a field indicating it has reviewed more recently to ensure that it still is current. For me, one of the important date divides is whether the information is technical/technological or not. Non technical information like Cooking Recipes, or Housecleaning Tips can be undated. They are timeless. But technical information, especially anything computer related, is subject to becoming outdated very fast. It needs some sort of context. Dates are one; working environment would be another. So, for your HTML tip, I could do without a date if there was a note saying this tip is valid for IE 6,7,8 ... and FireFox 2,3.x, ... . That way if I see an undated article that was last checked on IE 6, I can reasonably put less weight on it than one that has been checked to work in IE 9. Same for Windows tips. If I don't see a date or version information it is hard to tell if it is still relevant. And actually Windows version information is better than a date. A 10 year old Win 3.1 tip is useless. A 10 year old Win XP tip still has some validity because I know that some XP tips are often still relevant in Vista, and even maybe Win7. But in comparison a Vista tip has more relevance for Win7 than an XP one. PS: I have a large, hi def screen. Could you make the "Response" field larger, wider AND taller so we can keep better track of what we've said. This tiny 'keyhole' is more suited for a site designed for a 600x800 screen. Or are you designing for small screen smartphones rather than desktop/laptop computers?

—Guest Ron

We have met the enemy and s/he is us!

I cannot tell you how many times I go to the I-net looking for a solution to a specific problem. Spending hours reading articles that look like they may have a solution to only find out that the problem they are addressing is related to an antiquated version of the software I am using is the ultimate frustration. e-time and events change and change radically and quickly. Unless authors identify the date (or version of the software they are addressing) IMHO they are articles not worth reading. Sure, your articles may be timeless but when the articles you write are outdated do you take the time to remove them from circulation? I have a nagging problem with Excel 2007 - and nothing aggravates me more that to get to the end of a 15 minute dissertation to find out that they are addressing ONLY Excel 2003. When I write helpful articles I ALWAYS put the date of the article, if appropriate the Version of the software I am addressing. I may suggest that it be tried in newer versions.

—Guest Gerry

dates necessary for me

A lot of research I do is medical or political in nature so dates are extremely important. I always look for a date first to see if the information is current. If no date, I often go back to the search engine and look for something that has one. I can see where dates would be useful if someone were looking up current web design trends. I suspect a lot of people find an old page and think it's the latest thing. Probably the cause of a lot of really ugly sites. : )

—faithmartin

Dates on Pages

All web pages I do have a copyright date(s) (year only) in the footer. I use JavaScript to automatically update on the stroke of midnight of the new year. Adding the date does 2 things. 1. it lets the viewer know the content is relatively current and 2. on older sites, where there is a span of years, it let's the viewer know you've been around a while. However, if you don't keep the dates "up to date" you can lose people who see that the page is old and assume it is also stale.

—TriviaWolf

Dates are vital

There is nothing more frustrating that spending time and effort gathering new information thinking your doing the right thing to find out later that the information you were basing that routine on or application around is out of date and irrelevant. For example if I want to learn website development and go to an article that was written 10 years ago, then it would be deemed proper to use tables for layout and ie 4 is great etc etc. If the article is marked as being old then at least the end user has a fair idea that the information may be out of date especially in may fast paced fields such as development languages etc. Also it shows if a site is actively being updated etc. ########################################################################## From Jennifer: actually, as I mention in the article, my 10-year-old tables articles state at the top that using tables for layout is not recommended. It's not the date that makes the page correct or accurate - it's the person maintaining it.

—DazzaJ

Dated Content?

On my site, we date and time our content because we focus on matetrial that is concerning current news or has a historical context. We believe this requires a date, because when something happened matters...

—Guest erri.six

flower bloom times

I try to get bloom periods correct... dated pictures gives an idea of what to expect from the various plants I discuss on my plant site.

—stonethegardener