HTML5 Timestamp Code for WordPress using <time> (including PHP)

Originally Posted on May 25, 2011 Last Updated on June 25, 2012

The new HTML5 <time> tag provides a semantic way to wrap your post dates, as well as properties for the tag that could prove quite useful to getting your content found more often around the web, especially once Google starts looking for these tags to update their Blog and recent searches features. If you’d like to begin to use the tag on your WordPress site, the following should work nicely.

<time datetime="<?php the_time('Y-m-d'); ?>" pubdate><?php the_time('M j, Y'); ?></time>

Just find the any existing references to the_time in your theme (index.php and single.php are likely candidates, perhaps also archive.php, search.php and category.php where applicable). Don’t forget that you’ll likely need to edit your CSS as well.

PS. You may want to drop the pubdate property from the tag if you decide to use this in your comments section as well.

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