As of right now, the publication timestamp before this paragraph reads "Published on 2019-10-20, around 18:14:20". This timestamp is also a permalink for this page.
The dates on these posts ("2019-10-20") have been there since soon after I started this blog, but I just added the time-of-day information ("around 18:14:20") today. A machine-readable version of the time, including the time zone, has also been invisibly included in the permalink's HTML.
I did this as one step in upgrading my website so that other people can subscribe to it. If I only provided the date of publication, but not the time, someone else's reader program wouldn't be able to put my post in chronological order when compared with another post.
I didn't specify publication times when writing posts before today. On the pages for those posts, how should I go about displaying a publication time?
- I could give these posts a default time, such as midnight, or a number that stands out by seeming artificial, like "12:34:56". This would be inaccurate, but would ensure that anyone subscribing to the blog (or otherwise interacting with individual blog posts) would get some information about the time of publication.
- I could also remove the time information from previous posts altogether. This would prevent me from providing information I know is wrong, at the cost of making it a bit harder to use my posts as data for other purposes.
For now, I prefer the latter plan. I don't want to publish inaccurate time information. Please tell me if you have a suggestion one way or another.