Last Updated to Show On Actual Posts

Hi there. I’m not exactly sure what you’re asking.

If you want that time to show somewhere in your theme on the front-end of your site, you need to use the template functions or the shortcode, which are well documented on the FAQ page.

On the back end, the published and last-modified dates are always available in the list table view as well as in the edit post view (as shown here).

This plugin does not change anything outside of wp-admin, but makes it easy to add if you want to, but that part is up to you.

Hope that helps!

Thanks Evan. I just thought that once I enabled the plugin and updated an existing post, it would automatically show the ‘last updated’ date on the front end. But I see that it requires the shortcode or editing core files. I just tried using the shortcode and see that it appears, but I’m just wondering is there any specific place I need to place the shortcode. I didn’t see that in the FAQ.

Also, will the last updated stamp appear in search engines?

[ No bumping please. ]

• This reply was modified 7 years, 10 months ago by Jan Dembowski.

The plugin definitely does not require editing core files, nor would I recommend you do that to get the timestamp to appear on the front of your website. If you’re not comfortable with php or extending the output from your theme with hooks, then probably using the shortcode is the way to go for you.

I can’t say that there is any specific place where the shortcode is needed; I suppose that depends on what you are trying to achieve with it.

The content of the shortcode would of course be indexable by search engines, but if you want to inform the search engine of the last modified time, you’re better off using an XML sitemap. Yoast SEO provides this or you could use a dedicated plugin like Google XML Sitemaps.