Implausible date <pubdate>

One of your posts has a last-modified time of December 8, 2008. Unfortunately, I have no way of telling you which post it is.

See, every post gets two timestamps. One of them is the actual timestamp on the post. The other is a last-modified timestamp. At some point, your server time was set wrong and you modified a post then. That time got saved in that post.

You need to figure out which post has the wrong time, then edit and resave that post, to get the current time onto it. There’s no visibility on the post modified time in the interface that I know of. You can look at your database using phpMyAdmin and check there. Look for post_modified_gmt.

Incidentally, that will fix your feedburner ping issues as well.

Otto42, Thank You. What you are saying makes so much sense. When I look in WP and see the timestamp (Manage > Post > ‘When’ column), none in December say 2008. You talk about the actual timestamp and the last-modified timestamp. Sorry to ask such a basic question, but where do I find both timestamps? Is the ‘When’ column the last-motified timestamp? Where is the actual timestamp located? Is this where you were saying to edit the database file? Where is the database usually located? I am using SWSoft Plesk for the file manager.

When you go to Manage > Post > Month…, it does not list December 2008. If there was a post with that date, wouldn’t WP create a pull down option for that month? (I just experiemented for Feb 2008, and it created one in the pull down menu.)

I am unable to find the file post_modified_gmt. Is there a place it would ‘usually’ be located (i.e. wp-content, wp-admin)? I found post and post-new, but no date to change.

No, no, it is not a file, and it is not on your site or accessible through your site. I am talking about a column in your site’s database.

You will use phpMyAdmin or some other tool provided by your host to look inside the actual database. Look at the wp_posts table and the contents of that. Figure out which post has the problem, then edit and resave it in WordPress to reset the post_modified timestamp.

You cannot see the post_modified timestamp value anywhere in WordPress directly. You must look in the database using some tool (like phpMyAdmin) to see that information.

I am ecstatic, elated, and encouraged that I can do this. (It reminds me of the days of DOS and Windows being a user friendly interface. It looks like WP is a database with a user friendly interface also.)

Thanks to your patience and giving me the right words (database, tables, and phpMyAdmin), I think it is fixed (I will know tomorrow when the next post becomes live, then change this to resolved).

Kudos!

The post_modified timestamps don’t have any sort of user-friendly interface because they’re not something we want the user to be able to change. They always show the actual timestamps that you last modified the post. The only reason they’d be wrong is if your server was set to the wrong time for whatever reason.

Thanks for all the help! I love learning new things. I’m moving on to other things now.
Blessings and best wishes to you.