One of the few frustrations I have with Movable Type is that MTEntryDate is always the date of the creation of the entry (e.g. when you clicked on "New Entry") and not the posting date. I frequently create a post and use Movable Type's draft mode to save it while I work on it. Sometimes, I might not post it for a day or two. If I don't remember to manually change the entry date, I wind up "posting to the past" because the date defaults to date of creation, not date of posting.

I would like an automated way to include
1. the time and date of creation
2. the time and date of posting
3. the time and date of the last update
in each entry.

MTEntryDate gets me #1. The LastModified MT plug-in gets me #3.

I haven't been able to find the appropriate combination of MT tags or plug-ins that will allow me to automatically distinguish the "created on" date from the time of posting.

Thoughts? Solutions?

Thanks!

--
Greg
greg@NOSPAMtenreasonswhy.com
http://www.tenreasonswhy.com/weblog/

MT only keeps two dates for the entry, the creation date and the updated date. Personally, I sometimes manually change the creation date to the date/time when I actually post the entry.

If you really need all three dates, you'd have to store the post date somewhere else, like in the keywords field of your entry and enter it manually when you post.

And no, there is no simple way to order MTEntries based on the modified date. You can, if you are using the SQL plugin, but it's a bit tedious - I really wish they'd add that fature to MT's MTEntries tag.

I must be confused:



Is that modified_on something other than what we're talking about here??

I'm using it on my site to list recently updated entries, with the LastModified plugin to display the modification date.

Sorry, I meant to write that there is no built-in way to limit the entries based on the modified_on field - you are correct that you can sort on that field. In other words, the isn't a "lastn_modified" attribute or some such. I'd want to be able to say:This would be differently from the following code, which returns the 5 most recently created entries and sorts them byt their modified_on date (they may not be the five most recently modified entries):
BTW, I've included such an attribute in the GlobaListings plugin for the MTGlobalEntries tag, but it doesn't exist in the built-in MTEntries tag.

Ahhh. Okay, I'm with you now.

Yeah, that's something I have on the Requested Features List: Tags:

Girlie--

Actually, yes, I believe what I'm talking about is different from modified_on.

Imagine:

I draft an entry at 10am. This is time of creation.

I publish the entry to my weblog at 2:30pm. This is time of posting.

I edit the entry at 2:35pm.

I edit the entry again at 3:15PM. This is the last modified time.

Right now, I cannot figure out a way to capture 2:30pm, the time the entry was published to the weblog.

Thoughts?

I think my thoughts are the same as Stepan's: