In my last blog post I mentioned a technique that I used to lower the bounce rate for my blog. By removing the date from my blog posts I found that the bounce rate on older blog posts improved.
Presumably this is because visitors were no longer assuming the blog post would be old or out of date information based on an older post date.
A couple of people asked in the comments how to go about doing this themselves, so here are the steps you can use to remove dates from blog posts. Since I use Thesis for my blog themes I will show you both the Thesis way and the regular WordPress theme way.
Removing Post Dates in Thesis
Thesis makes this nice and easy. Simply log in to your WordPress admin area and in the left hand sidebar click on Thesis and then Site Options.
In the Display Options section expand Byline and clear the tick box for “Show published-on date in post byline”.
Click the “Big Ass Save Button” and the change is now saved.
Removing Post Dates in Other WordPress Themes
I don’t use other premium WordPress themes so it is possible that they have similar controls to Thesis for turning off post dates. But if they don’t then you can simply edit the theme files to remove them yourself.
Note, before you go ahead with editing theme files I suggest you download a copy of them via FTP first or make a backup of your WordPress blog. If something goes wrong you can then replace the files again from your backup copy.
In your WordPress admin area go to Appearance and click on Editor.
On the right hand side in the list of theme files look for “Single Blog Post” or single.php. This is the theme file that controls how individual blog posts look. Click on the file to open it in the Editor.
The next bit gets a little trick. Different themes implement the post date in different ways, and in different locations. In most cases it comes right after the headline, so for those you would look for the code that says:
< ?php the_title(); ? >
Just after that you would see the code that displays the post date. For example:
If you’re still not sure where to find it look for surrounding text that appears on your blog posts, such as “Posted on…”, and then find that in the single.php code.
(You can see why I like Thesis so much, it makes this type of change to your blog very easy to do)
Once you have located the code that is displaying the date you simply remove it from the file and click the Update File button in the Editor. Go back to your blog and test the change to see if it worked.
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{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Paul,
I had already figured out how to take off the post date. That wasn’t the question we posed in your last article so correct me if I got the wrong impression from it. I thought that it looked liked you were able to remove the date from older individual posts, but managed to keep the date of posts on your main page. For instance, if you go to my site, I have it configured to show 3 recent articles. I would like to keep the date showing for those articles, but when you click on any individual article, the published on date would be removed.
To me, it makes sense to leave it on your most recent article (otherwise how would we know when it was published?) but to take it off other, older articles, especially those where people have come directly to that article through backlinks or search results.
Thanks,
Karen
I think we probably misunderstood each other. Here is what I said in my post:
“A few weeks ago I removed the time stamp from my single blog posts. I left them visible on the home page because I want new visitors to see how often the site is updated, but for individual posts they’ve been removed.”
And what you asked:
“can you point us to how you can turn off the indivdual timestamp on single posts, but keep it on the main page?”
I think we meant different things by “single blog posts”. For me that is any blog post viewed on my blog via its permalink. I made the change for all of them, as described above.
The reason my homepage retains the timestamps is because I’m using teasers on my homepage, which is controlled via different settings in Thesis. For other themes its also controlled separately by the index.php file instead of the single.php file.
So as to leaving it on the most recent articles? I don’t really see the benefit. People who land on my home page can see the timestamps for posts. People who land directly on blog posts, well that is the point, I’m trying to reduce bounce rate by removing the timestamp entirely. As long as the headline and opening sentence draws the reader in I doubt many of them would stop to wonder when the post was published.
But you make a valid point, some people would want to only remove timestamps when posts age past a certain threshold, say 30 days. All it takes is a little conditional logic. Instead of writing up a demo I’ll point out a couple of articles out there that describe it already:
How to do it in Thesis:
http://thoughtsunlimited.net/blog/wordpress/hide-dates-in-old-thesis-theme-posts/
How to do it in regular themes:
http://goodkarmahost.com/wordpress/removing-the-date-from-older-posts-in-wordpress/
How to do it with a plugin:
http://www.dailyblogtips.com/date-exclusion-wordpress-plugin/
Thanks for the clarification and the links, Paul. I’ll be checking them out.
I just did this yesterday with my Headway theme, and it was really easy. Wish I would have done it a long time ago, but as with most things technical, I made it out to be harder than what it actually was.
Its great how good premium themes make this kind of thing so easy.
Paul, lucky (smart?) me, I use Thesis, so this will be easy.
On the flip side, though, when I get to a blog post that has no date, I wonder how old it is and if anyone will ever read my comment.
I think this technique is best for evergreen content rather than something that could easily be dated. For example, one of my blog posts about Wordpress hacks of Godaddy has 50-plus comments. But I think people need to know the date of the post so they can place the event in historical context.
And what if Wordpress ever makes it a standard option to remove dates from posts such that theme modification isn’t necessary? Then this post would be giving old information.
John, your content strategy certainly is a factor in whether this techique is worth doing or not.
If WordPress ever made such an option available and this post became obsolete then it would either slowly drop out of the search rankings, or if it was getting enough traffic I would simply write a new post and add a link to direct people to the new info.
Great tip thanks
Yes and the post about bounce rates made a lot of sense. Nice to get some little tricks to keep people thinking. I know that thesis is great but she can have here moments as well. Do you find a problem when working right out of the thesis editor. I am not a php person but when I try to make some changes through the editor panel they don’t seem to stick. Even after doing a refresh for the page and yes, before you ask I hit the Big A– save button, although if I make the change direct with note pad on to the php custom file they seem to take fine? just wondering
Thanks Take care
I’ve never had any problems changing settings in Thesis. Maybe you haven’t configured your file permissions correctly. I suggest going back over the Thesis install instructions on DIYthemes.com and double checking it all.
Paul,
Thanks for the post. Removing the date looks pretty easy now. Not as easy as with Thesis, of course, but still not too bad. I just looked at my theme pages and found the function right away. Thanks for the info.
Also, out of curiosity, how long have you been using Thesis? Would you recommend it to other bloggers?
Thanks,
Joe
Joe, I’ve been using it for a year or two. I like it, good flexibility and every version gets easier to customize.
Thanks for the tip, it worked great on my Thesis Blog.