I update my posts regularly and show the Last Updated date.

The original date remains in the code but is not visible to the visitor. If I think it important, I will manually insert at the end of the post (Originally published on: date).

I admit that on posts where I have comments dated 2011 or 2012, and my update is 2014 - well that does look a bit weird.

But at the end of the day, the point is to indicate to the reader that the author is actively updating posts on the site.

Of course, you can leave both dates - the originally published date and the last updated date. I had it that way originally but it looked messy.

The search engines can tell whether the update is major or minor, and they will crawl the page if it is determined that there is sufficient new or varied content.

I got the code from the WPbeginner site, which has a good explanation of this, and as you will see, they show only the last updated date, and explain why not having a date is a bad idea (as Carson mentioned):

http://www.wpbeginner.com/opinion/why-you-should-not-remove-dates-from-your-wordpress-blog-posts/

~Jude

Glad you asked this question. Hopefully I will remember this blog and answers down the line. Have learned a thing or two here.

Great question. I have a Pending Page/Post Folder (3P-folder) on my desktop. A place I go to with ideas. I create a page/post with an initial headline. It can always be edited later.

When I first started had Christmas vacation thinking I could learn and create a website. I started a site rubix. After my time was less, dedicating 1 hour daily. Kept this goal having 12-16 hour days teaching in the classroom on contract and online as a local business started in 2007.

Time warp to now. Am editing and posting articles from the 3P-folder. My post will follow many written since signing on as premium member.

I am leaving the dates. Will incorporate in my content a sentence of the time and research it took or link relevant articles to link to an older article.

To hyperlink within a website is good. To backlink to another website seems controversial but I see many websites do.

I think dates show my visitor that it takes time to create content for them. This shows we are human in this fast fix world. Trust and credibility are foremost. I think leaving the date written ensures this.

I think date trails are happy links. ^_~

on one of the lessons, it was suggested we could write new post pages and sent up a time and date when they can be publish then when you want to go back to a old post you can just date it to go on automatically and this updates a new post if that makes sense

I will leave my dates on it. Adding a "last updated" will give it even more authority.
John

Hi Eddie,

When I do research online I like to know when content was posted so that I can determine if it's VALID.

Affiliate marketing is a very, very fast paced industry so having dates on your content would be just as important as a news or sports blog.

No date means there is no way to determine if it's current, so I'd suggest leaving wordpress to work in it's default way.

Carson

I actually think that using the CSS that removes dates on posts makes content look more up to date because readers won't know the difference and then your content will be more of a timeless quality. I also believe that it also makes content look more professional and polished in a traditional static website layout kind of way even if it's a blog. This also refers to the entire byline including author etc. If the date is important to the content you could add it to the content itself like a title at the top so that when you edit your content you can also edit the date to reflect the new changes.

I've been thinking about that too. All my post dates were original dates, even after updating posts. I am kind of thinking about trashing and deleting post after a couple of years, and re-posting them with new dates. Since the post was deleted, it won't be a duplicate post.