want timestamp to be when published, not when post began

  • hi. this is a nit-pickety little detail, but it’d be great if i could get it to happen. right now, here’s the process:

    i start the new post in wordpress. usually takes me 1-2 hours to write an entry. then i publish. the timestamp, per wordpress default, is the time when i first started the post, which is 1-2 hours previous.

    is there a way i can get wordpress to choose as the timestamp when the completed entry was actually published? i would like to do this for the sake of digital journal veracity, as the timestamp of all my entries is when the entry is completed, not began.

    or is my only option to go back and change the timestamp each and every time? (yes, i know a simple solution would be to compose my entries in an alternate application, and then copy and paste into a new post when finally ready, but that adds an extra step, adds clutter, and an innate handling of this in wordpress would reduce that extra step for me.)

    any help would be much appreciated. thanks.

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  • Well, let me add my three cents. If you spend this long writing a post, then you are obviously concerned about the end result. Therefore, it makes more sense to write in a word processor or really good text editor with spell check and search and replace functions to clean things up if you need to. It is certainly much easier to edit your work, too, as you are not confined to a little window.

    It takes only a little jerk of the hand to click the back or forward button on the mouse, or lean on the keyboard or something and your two hours of writing is completely lost as WordPress isn’t meant for serious writing but for serious posting and has no backup or save features that protect your data automatically.

    For me, I have set WordPerfect to not change quote marks and hypens to characters and I write everything in there, using double spaces to create “paragraphs” and a little html if I need a <h3> heading or two. This allows me to make it look the way I want. I then spell check, proof and edit, and spell check again and get every word right before I copy and paste it into WordPress. Then the timestamp issue would be exactly right.

    If none of this matters to you, then the time issue should also not matter to you since “when” you posted is important by date not time when you look back on four years of posts. Unless you are posting time critical information so you can be “first out of the gate” with the information, time really is arbitary.

    I know it doesn’t answer your question, but it is reality. Good writing!

    Why don’t you change the time stamp just before you publish?

    There no reason “to go back,” you can place whatever time you desire prior to publishing. Just uncheck the time check box, change the time, then re-check the box.

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