Manage publishing metadata and dates

Publish date information is critical for workflows like content planning, sorting content by publication timelines, and ensuring that time-sensitive content (like news articles or promotional posts) appears as intended. Missing or inaccurate publish dates can lead to inefficiencies and errors, disrupting the user experience. Handling content modification and publishing dates within a CMS can significantly impact content management, usability, and SEO. Review the following approaches to see which works best for your situation. Most customers use a combination of them as different publishing use cases may prefer different approaches.

Approach A: Manually specify publish dates

Create a new date & time element to store publish date and time values in your content items. Content creators manually input the intended publish date.

Approach B: Sync publish date to publishing

Use webhook notifications to automatically update the date & time elements with the publish dates after content items are published. You can separate the date & time element in a specific content group to restrict manual edits.

Approach C: Use the last modified date

Use the content item’s last modified date as a proxy for the publish date. The system-generated last modified date reflects the most recent content change. It doesn’t reflect workflow changes and other metadata changes. This approach works if publishing occurs immediately after making content changes.