How do I change the publication date of weblog entries?

Ah, you are learning one of the secret benefits of having your publication and Web site managed by a content management system like Movable Type: you can change things after the fact. It's hard to do that in a print magazine, but errors can be corrected, typos can be fixed, images improved, and, of course, publication date tweaked as needed.

There are two ways to change the publication date of an article in Movable Type, but I believe that the easier one is to use what they call "Power User Mode". Here's how...

Log in to your Movable Type administrative area, then click on the "Edit Entries" button. The introductory paragraph above the list of entries has the link we want:

Click on "Open power-editing mode" and you'll see a rather complex window listing titles, publication dates, authors, and other information about the twenty most recent articles on your Weblog:

Click on the screenshot for a full size view

You can adjust titles, recategorize entries, switch articles from Publish to Draft status, or even delete articles from this view, but the most important field is that you can change the date of publication.

Let's pick the article How do I invite people to join Gmail? to adjust. You'll note that the listed date is 2005-05-30 06:56:50 which is to say May 30th, 2005 at 6:56am.

To alter this article to appear as if it were written at 3:30 in the afternoon, I'd simply click into the Date field and change the time to reflect 2005-05-30 15:30:00. The date can be changed just as easily, of course, even far into the future if you want to confuse your readers, or back in the past for that sense of historical authenticity.

Once you've adjusted the date to your liking, on the bottom of the Power Editing window is a "Save" button: click it, and you'll probably have to rebuild your entire Weblog too (it'll say "Your changes have been saved. REBUILD to see those changes reflected on your public site." Click on the REBUILD link and you'll now see:

Click on "Rebuild" and, depending on your server, either wait a few seconds or go get a cup of tea and read the paper. Once it's done, though, your changes will be reflected throughout the site, even if you've changed the order of entries on your pages.

Hope that clarifies how to accomplish this useful Movable Type technique.