Blog software where I can edit the post dates.

January 26, 2005 9:23 PM

I want to put up letters from World War II in blog form. Is there software, or tweaked software, to post weblog entries with dates in the 1940s?
posted by inksyndicate to (7 comments total)

I know Movable Type and Textpattern do, but I'd suspect that pretty much any recent application would support the backdating of entries. If you have a package in mind, just look through the feature list or FAQ for "backdating" or something relating to "adjustable date/time stamps" and you should be good to go.

If you're not interested in hosting it yourself, there's always LiveJournal, which also has that capability.
posted by abiku at 9:47 PM on January 26, 2005

Just for reference, Blogger will let you backdate posts, but it appears that it only lets the date go back to 1999.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 10:06 PM on January 26, 2005

If you're trying to backdate on any Unix-based system, keep in mind that Unix datestamps generally only go back to 1970. This might be a limitation with some blogging software, too.

Doing some experiments with MovableType (version 2.64, using the MySQL database), it appears it'll accept 1940s dates just fine.
posted by neckro23 at 11:27 PM on January 26, 2005

(and in fact, it turns out I'm completely mistaken about Unix time.)
posted by neckro23 at 11:34 PM on January 26, 2005

A quick test using WordPress shows that I can date a post back to the 1st of january 1900.
I can write a July 14th, 1789 entry alright.
But when I come back to modify the entry, the datestamp selector (which can be turned off) presents me with the date 1969-12-31...
Finally, trying to blog the death of Jesus (April 25th, 33 - I guess) would resultat in a datestamp in 2033...
YMMV, then...
posted by XiBe at 1:23 AM on January 27, 2005

I doubt any blogs this side of blosxom are affected by how UNIX represents time. Everything else will be bounded by what database (or data structure) they use (unless they impose their own restrictions.)

MySQL's date range (at least as of 5.03 alpha) is 1000--1-1 to 9999-12-31. I'm surprised WordPress imposed an artificial limitation beyond that. But it is MySQL's behavior to convert two digit years from 00-69 to 2000-2069, and from 70-99 to 1970-1999 -- the behavior you see for 33 may just be inherited from MySQL.

PostgreSQL can cover 4713 BC (literally prehistoric) to 5874897 AD (almost certainly post-historic)!

Samuel Pepys' diary, concerning dates in the 17th century, is powered by Movable Type.
posted by Zed_Lopez at 6:31 AM on January 27, 2005

Interestingly, someone in our office (we make MT and TypePad) just put up a bunch of wartime love letters using Movable Type. So it's not just possible, but encouraged. :)
posted by anildash at 8:23 PM on January 29, 2005