Thoughts about footer dates
From: James To: Martin Date: 14-Feb-2007 Subject: BCIM Footers 'Last Updated' Hi Martin, At present I seem to forget to edit the 'last updated' text manually. I wondered if it would be OK to include the following in the footers; <!--#config timefmt="%d %B %Y" --> <!--#set var="mod_date" value="$LAST_MODIFIED" --> <!--#echo var="mod_date" --> This simply inserts the date that the last time the file was written to. Though am not advocating changing all pages without the 'checker', simply the files that I am up-dating at the time. James
Hi James, The Business School's pages all had auto-generated footer dates (if I remember rightly) but I decided against them because I think that a page date should reflect the last time someone checked to make sure that the content was valid, rather than e.g. the date of the last typo correction. I quite often edit pages without re-dating them, deliberately. I remember that we received a complaint once - via Sally - from a member of staff who had left LSBU ages ago about a recently dated page that implied s/he was still at LSBU. Mike - do you have strong feelings about this? Martin.
I don't really have strong feelings about it no. The only time I think it would be problematic would be if copying the website on mass or doing something which caused the file dates to all be updated. Normally, the only time the file date changes IS when the page is updated. The question is how much it matters whether an update is a trivial update like a typo or an actual "authoritive" content update. As you may/may not remember I have a utility I use to stick the headers and footers of the pages on (mainly so that if the template changes I only have to change one file), and this actually sets the date, stamped into the plain HTML, when it does it - which means in effect that typo updates get recorded too. I prefer this because otherwise like James I find I forget to change the date. I think that this would only be a problem if (a) someone wants to find out something specific AND (b) the information on the website is out of date and factually incorrect AND (c) that page has had a typo correction recently giving the impression that it should not be out of date. However, if (a) and (b) are true but not (c), so the page is dated accurately (say September 06) how much difference does it make to the user? Are they going to think, "oh, this page hasn't been updated since September 06 so I'm not going to believe what it says"? What I mean is the problem is out of date information on the website rather than the actual date it states. On the other hand, suppose we changed the template to say "Content last checked for accuracy: " instead of "Last Updated". That changes the perspective a bit towards what Martin says! But probably too far! Suppose a room number needs changing for some service for students, that's an important update not a typo, but it can't wait for someone to verify all the other information on that page! Personally I don't find myself making that many typo edits! So I don't think this is a big problem. But it is really irritating if having edited a page and uploaded you then realise you forgot to change the date and have to load it up and edit again just for that! Actually, might not be a bad idea to have the SSI file date stamp embedded in a hidden comment in the HTML as a handy means of checking the last edit date, as well as keeping the hand edited content date. I think actually displaying two dates is too much though isn't it? Mike
OK, well maybe we should each just do whatever we prefer or whatever we think makes most sense given the context. I agree that displaying two dates would be OTT. Martin.