You can change the date format used on your Newspack site by using WordPress’s built in options, or the theme’s ‘time ago’ functionality.

Changing the date format

To change the date format in WordPress, follow these steps:

  1. Navigate to WP Admin > Settings > General.
  2. Scroll down to the section labelled Date Format:
  1. Pick from one of the pre-defined formats, or select the Custom format and use PHP date formats to specify how you’d like your date to appear.
  2. Click Save Changes.

The date format you picked will be used on posts throughout your site.

Using the ‘time ago’ date format

The Newspack themes include an option to display a ‘time ago’ format for posts published within a specific range. Enabling this will switch recent posts from a fix date to a human-readable time ago format, ranging from seconds to days.

To enable the time ago format, follow these steps:

  1. Navigate to Customizer > Template Settings > Post Settings.
  2. Check the Use “time ago” date format option.
  3. Set a cut-off time for the ‘time ago’ format — by default, it will only apply this format to posts published in the last two weeks:

4. Click Publish.

The time ago date format will be applied to all posts newer than your cut-off date, using seconds, minutes, hours, then days:

Once posts are older than your cut-off date, they will use the date format you have set under WP Admin > Settings > General.

Displaying the “last updated” date

The Newspack theme includes an option to display a post’s last updated date. When enabled, this will appear next to the original published date on single posts, if a post has been updated more than 24 hours since it was first published:

To enable the ‘last updated’ date, follow these steps:

  1. Navigate to Customizer > Template Settings > Post Settings.
  2. Check Show “last updated” date on single posts.
  1. If paired with the “time ago” date format, the cut-off for that format will automatically be set to one day, so it’s only applied to the updated date.
  2. Click Publish to save your changes.

The last updated date will be displayed on all single posts that have had changes saved more than 24 hours after they were originally published.

Disabling “last updated” date on a per-post basis

When you have the “last updated” date option enabled in the Customizer, you will also have the ability to turn it off on a per-post basis.

If you don’t want the last updated date to appear on a specific post, follow these steps:

  1. Edit the post.
  2. In the right column, under Status & visibility, enable the toggle labeled Hide updated date:
  1. Click Update.

When this option is enabled, the updated date will not display on this specific post, no matter how recently it was edited.

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