Last Updated: 24th July, 2022

How To Show Last Updated Date In WordPress Posts? Bingo! It is one of the most important things about blogging. Because displaying and presenting the most updated information to the readers or visitors of your blog or website should the primary key point of any website or blog.

In this way readers or visitors are satisfied that they are reading the most updated information in the article to the date and not any stale stuff, which may not be relevant at the given time.

It’s true that not all WordPress theme has the feature by default, like my theme does not have this feature to be honest, but this can be done by modifying the theme code a little bit (Only for advanced users with some knowledge about PHP and not recommended for all). A few days ago I myself, was looking for an appropriate solution for the purpose.

But unfortunately I could not find any relevant result. Only some reference of obsolete and buggy codes which I found. So in this article I wish to show the most recent and working solution about “How To Show Last Updated Date In WordPress Posts” while keeping the Published Date untouched.

Many famous websites and blogs don’t even show any date on their articles. This is a very bad practice and you should never remove dates from your articles or modify to a new recent date to prove updated. The methods I will be showing below will only be applicable for Posts and NOT for Pages.

I am mentioning this line because the other codes available automatically adds to the pages too, resulting a broken site. Which is simply not desired.

4 Methods On How To Show Last Updated Date In WordPress Posts

1. How To Show Last Modified Date And Published Date Together with WP Last Modified Info Plugin
2. How To Show Last Modified Date And Published Date Together with Code Snippets Plugin
3. How To Show Last Modified Date, Published Date and Time All With Shortcode
4. Adding Last Updated Date in Theme Templates

1. How To Show Last Modified Date And Published Date Together with WP Last Modified Info Plugin

Until yesterday I was using the second method while a friend of mine, Sayan Datta created this New much waited WP Last Modified Info Plugin through which showing updated date, time, on pages, posts, also adding ‘dateModified’ schema markup data automatically which surely adds value to SEO, customization of text, date format, colors and everything is now possible just setting up with the click of a button. No need to know coding.

Let’s Have A Look About The Plugin Features:-

• Allows you to display Last modified information in your posts and pages individually.
• Provides you with options to display the last modified/last updated date above or below your posts and pages.
• You can also set date/time formats and the position of the timestamp in WordPress Posts and Pages which can be either before content or after the content.
• Allows you to customize the text which is to be displayed alongside the last modified date (default: Last updated On).
• Inserts ‘dateModified’ schema markup to your WordPress posts automatically.
• Allows you to display last modified info on all post types column and publish meta box in the dashboard with the author name.
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• Allows you to sort posts/pages in last updated/modified date time order.
• Allows you to display last modified info on your post as human readable format, i.e. Days/weeks/months/years ago.
• Allows you to display last modified info of all posts in the WordPress admin bar.
• Allows you to display last modified author info in posts, pages.
• Allows you to add last modified timestamp in post/page’s custom field.
• Allows you to edit last modified date and time from the post edit screen and quick edit screen also.
• You can also add template tags to your theme files. Go to the FAQ section for more information.
• And you can customize all and everything.

First simply install the plugin from WordPress Repository WP Last Modified Info Plugin.

Now in the settings page customize the options as per your need through post options, page options.

Only if you want to add custom style to the text you can simply add the following format in the custom css box of the plugin as shown below.

.post-last-modified  {
    color: #5ade06;
    font-weight: bold;
}
.post-last-modified-td  {
    color: #42f1f4;
    font-weight: normal;
}

So we are done with the most simple option to add updated or modified date and time with any themes or custom WordPress setup!

2. How To Show Last Modified Date And Published Date Together with Code Snippets Plugin

Using this method, you can display the original published date and automatically add a last modified date as well! (It’s not mandatory but I personally prefer to show in my blog.)

This is a very unique approach because it shows the age of your post, while also letting your readers know that you’ve recently updated it or not.

Now, for this method, we just need to do is add a Code Snippet to your WordPress site.

You can simply add this code snippet directly to the functions.php file in the child theme, but I suggest using the Free Code Snippets plugin since it makes things easy and prevent you to make less messy things. Also if you change theme at any time, you don’t have to worry about that.

After installing Code Snippet Plugin, navigate to “Add New” section and add the following code. Please feel free to change the style colors as per your theme design.

function print_last_modified_info( $content ) {
if (get_the_modified_time() != get_the_time() && is_single()) {
$updated_time = get_the_modified_time('h:i a');
$updated_day = get_the_modified_time('F jS, Y');
$modified_content .= '<p class="last-modified-info" style="color: #5ade06;"><strong>Updated On:</strong> <span style="color: #00bcd4;">'.$updated_day.'</span></p>';} $modified_content.= $content; return $modified_content; } add_filter( 'the_content', 'print_last_modified_info' );

Then give it a tittle name and select “Only run on site front-end” option on the view-port.

Finally, Save Changes and Activate. You are good to go. Check any of your articles!(Please modify the CSS as per your theme.)

3. How To Show Last Modified Date, Published Date and Time All With Shortcode

With this method you will be able to display the post published date, updated date and the time all together just using another Free Last Modified Timestamp plugin.

You just need to install the plugin and place the [last-modified] in the beginning of any article you wish to show the updated date and time.

Wow! That was fast, but believe me it took hours to find the correct code with result with the help of my friend. Thanks to him as well!

4. Adding Last Updated Date in Theme Templates

Heads up! For this method you need to edit specific WordPress theme files. There are many WordPress themes available who now use their own template tags which define how these themes show post meta data like date and time. So be very careful about this one. As I have mentioned before that you need to have some PHP knowledge to go for this method. Always remember to take backups whatever you do!

Read More: Function Reference/the modified time from WordPress Codex.

To do this you need to look for the codes and hooks responsible for displaying the date and time. Just replace that code with the following code, or add it right after your theme’s date and time code.

<!--?php  $u_time = get_the_time('U'); $u_modified_time = get_the_modified_time('U'); if ($u_modified_time &gt;= $u_time + 86400) { echo "Last updated on "; the_modified_time('F jS, Y'); echo ", "; } else {echo "Posted on "; the_time('F jS, Y');} ?-->

Conclusion
So by now we have a clear picture about which method one should deploy for their website or blog. On a personal note, I prefer the first method Show Last Modified Date And Published Date Together with WP Last Modified Info Plugin as it provides information both about published date and modified or updated date.

In this way the readers or users will have more specific queries for what they are looking for. Like in my case I simply applied the first method by adding the plugin and customized as per my need. If you want use the other options you are free to use.

But I always recommend to go for WP Last Modified Info Plugin or if you want to test the other methods then DO take backup every time.

Whether you are working live or on a staging environment. Feel free to share with me if you have implemented any of these methods. I will be more than happy to learn from you.