Update publishing date of post?

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1

Hi,

I’m a new user who is still figuring things out. I currently have my own static site with posts that I would like to move write.as. I could just copy and paste my existing post here, there are not that many, but if possible, I would like to preserve the original publishing dates.

Is there a way to do such a thing? I noticed that even in the API it is not possible to set them.

2

Yep, you can update a post’s original published date in the web app by following these steps:

  • Publish the post
  • Click Edit to edit the post
  • Click the “i” icon that now shows up in the top-right corner of the editor
  • Change the Created date
  • Save your changes

You can also do this via the API by supplying a created value when initially publishing a post, as shown in the docs.

3

Ah, I missed that, that’s great.

This is going to be wonderful, thanks!

4

I was going to write a new post when I found this similar post. Would it be possible to extend this functionality whereby the public date should always be the first publication date if and only if the post started out in draft mode and was then published to a blog?

I don’t know if anyone else agrees, but logically when writing in Draft Mode, I may have posts that may take days to write or maybe I just want to pre-write the posts for publication in the future. Currently, when I publish it to my blog, it is being posted as the date of the draft which could be days or weeks ago.

I just had this issue when I noticed the behavior. It’s good to know the provided solution exists as a workaround, but I think having this automatic if starting in draft mode then publishing to blog would make more sense, if everyone else agrees I guess.

5

Not the solution you are looking for, but what you could do is, before moving the anonymous post into your blog, you can edit the post, update the metadata to set the current date, save, then publish/move the post to your blog.

My workflow for moving drafts into my blog is slightly different. Instead of moving drafts/anonymous posts into my blog, I edit the draft then copy paste all the text. I then write a new post for my blog and paste all the text there. This ensures the publish date is current and that there won’t be any weird post slug issues. Of course, I have to remember to go back and delete the draft, but since they are anonymous posts, no one can see them. So it’s okay even if I forget to clean it up. I can just do it later.

1 Like
6

I didn’t even think to do that, but that is a great suggestion as well. Just copying the final draft into a new blog post is probably a better alternative to avoid any remnants of metadata to affect the real post.

Thanks!

7

You are welcome!