Automatic Update for Blog Date

[lester]

Greetings!
I would like to know if there is anyway the date at the top of my blog can be set to update automatically? Right now, I go to the edit entries area every morning and update the date on each category.

http://www.diversityspotlight.com/cblog/

Thanks!
Lester

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

Uh, the way a blog works is that it shows the date your entry was posted, not the current date.

What you want is quite....strange

You could do it by editing your template file, but I really see no sense in printing the actuall date there. You could use the 'timezone' plugin (http://spartacus.s9y.org/cvs/additional ... ezones.zip) or any javascript code within a HTML nugget sidebar plugin to show that in the sidebar instead?

Best regards,
Garvin

[lester]

Hi Garvin,
I understand what you're saying but I have only one date on the opening page of the blog. My opening page list the categories with an opening statement for each category. At the top of the page is the date. It's only listed one time. This is the date I would like to have change on its own.

If a person clicks on the category of their choice, they will see all the comments with the date it was posted. Those dates will not change as you stated.

Is there a way to auto update the date on my (opening) page only???

Lester

[Don Chambers]

Lester - I think you might be trying to use "categories" to accomplish something each article entry is already capable of doing.

If a user clicks on the title of the entry, the post time, or the "comments" link below the entry, they will be taken to an extended display of the entry that includes all comments, plus presents a form to create new comments.

As your site presently stands - you have created 7 "entries". Each of these were created on a specific date and time, and you seem to want to keep updating the date to the current date.

You have also created a category for each of these entries that is the same as the title of the entry itself.

The idea of categories is to group similar articles (entries) by a category definition. Let me use your "food court" category as an example since I personally LOVE to eat!!

Instead of a single entry, with it's particular comments, you could have multiple entries, with different titles, created on different dates, each with their own comments. If a user clicked on the right sidebar entry "Food Court", they would see all the entries just for that particular category. Same goes for any of your other categories. Under the category "Food Court", might be articles such as "My recipie for apple pie", "My opinion on XYZ Restaurant in New York".

This all points back to Garvin's original reply. A Blog is basically a diary, and it develops over time. A first time visitor to your site is presented with the articles written by you, or other authors, in the order they were created. Comments do not change this order, the article entry itself is at the top of the hierarchy. You could use the extended entry properties plugin and mark all your entries as "sticky" which would group them all together under the heading "Sticky Postings" in the order of their creation.

Finally, I cannot help but think you might be trying to do something with Serendipity that might be better suited to a bulletin board application, such as what is used on this forum.

[lester]

Hi Don,
Great ideas! I understand much better. Thank you for the great advice. And if you love to eat, please post a comment in our Food Court category. Cheers!


Lester

[Don Chambers]

Keep us posted of your progress Lester.