Change is the Only Constant
By the time a newspaper is in your hands, it’s already out of date. Things will have changed. Maybe what you’re reading now, is close enough to the latest situation. Maybe not. The same goes for internet sites. So, we have a choice:
- Update our original post as needed.
- Write a new post when enough changes have happened.
- Don’t worry about it! Everything was correct at the time.
I prefer the first option as a general rule. It’s (I think) the easiest and most honest way of letting a reader know that the post / article has been modified since published.
What Changes Matter?
Let’s say you’ve written a product review, gushing over how great something is. One month later, the thing is dead. I’d like to know about that. You may have just been unlucky, but still let us know.
Or, some tips post that you wrote has an important update, a new best practice has been found. Let us know, please!
Finally factual mistakes and corrections need to be relayed. If you change a URL from:
/my-great-blog-post-about-cats
but then realise that dogs also deserve some love:
/my-great-blog-post-about-cats-and-dogs
It wouldn’t hurt to let the reader now about that too.
What Not to Include?
If you decide to change the category or tag of a post, that’s an internal change. No reader will really care about it. Typo’s are also not really importnt important either.
Notifying the Reader about Updates
I haven’t fully settled on my own best practice yet. But I think I’m going to try and get in the habit of having a line at the top of the page stating:
Page Last Updated On: YYYY-MM-DD
or,
Attention: Please see the Updates section at the bottom of this page as important changes have been made to this post!
Your Thoughts?
I’m sure other bloggers have their own techniques and ideas. If you have any tips or comments, you can email from the bottom of this page.
Updates
2024-12-29: Learned how to add an SVG image directly to a stylesheet. Previously I’d have all svg’s directly embedded in the html. So now Updates and Footnotes have nice looking icons before the text. I like this in particular for Updates as the asterisk makes it obvious to a reader as it’s found at the top and bottom of a post. My goal is that if a reader see the asterisk below the published date, they can be assured that (at the very least) there’s a short summary of the changes in the Updates section.
2024-12-28: This morning I finally decided on just including an updated date (if applicable) below the published date.
It took a while as I couldn’t decide on having it near the top or at the bottom of the page. Then, it was a question of have it on the same line, the line below? Then, it was alignment doubts (left, centre, right)…
Once I decided to have it on the line below the published date, I then became obsessed with having the two dates lined up!
Ah well. it’s done now.
