Changing Post Dates In Radio UserLand

Yes, Virginia, it is possible to backdate a Radio UserLand post. However, there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Radio UserLand was designed by an author who posted constantly. It was probably assumed that at least one post would be entered contemporaneously to document an event or thought. Corrections or updates could appear in later posts, or an existing post could be updated. The revolution would be televised, but in real-time. [grin] Given the lifestyle and work habits of the original author(s), this may have been an unnoticed design assumption. As weblogs acquired a broader audience, many of whom posted only infrequently, this assumption became less valid.

[Sidebar: Do not assume that I'm wearing my "holier than thou" hat here. I've done a lot of coding in my life, and all of it was influenced by both spoken and unspoken assumptions. Nobody's perfect. Radio is an very capable tool, in spite of some warts.]

Radio expects all posts in the weblogData.posts table to be in chronological order. Although backdating has been discussed many times on the support board, the official response from UserLand seems to be that it is not possible. Sadly, virtually every modern weblog tool, except Radio UserLand, allows the user to easily modify the date of a post. Considering how long this has been a problem, the bug is not likely to be fixed by UserLand in the near future. I consider this a serious problem if UserLand wants to claim Radio is still a user-friendly product. New users automatically assume a weblog tool can modify post dates.

It is possible to backdate a post if you are willing to deal with two problems:

1. Scrambled RSS feeds if you use categories (repairable)
2. Broken permalinks (non-repairable but non-fatal)

The following paragraphs document several Radio UserLand discussion group threads I found when researching the issue last year. I now use Radio to the Past regularly to backdate posts. It is not for the faint-of-heart, and will still sometimes scramble an RSS feed. Shit happens.

You need the unsupported Kit tool from Mark Paschal and the damage-repair macro rebuildCategoryStoryLists from David Phillips (TweezerMan) of The Tweezer's Edge v3.

From a discussion group post by Mark Paschal, author of the Kit tool:

Kit's Radio to the Past feature will redate posts for you, but because of how Radio stores weblog items, this has some problems unless you make additional adjustments. Most notably all the permalinks since the backdated time will change.

In the November 2003 thread at http://radio.userland.com/discuss/msgReader$28714, David details the reasons that using the "Radio to the Past" feature of Mark Paschal's Kit will break Radio UserLand permalinks and make a mess of the category story lists. I had scrambled RSS feeds prior to seeing David's helpful posts. David recommends that you run the rebuildCategoryStoryLists macro after posting a backdated item, but before publishing. This appears to assume that you have activated the 3-button post interface on the prefs page at http://127.0.0.1:5335/system/pages/prefs?page=2.11

In the February 2004 thread at http://radio.userland.com/discuss/msgReader$30224?mode=topic, David Phillips (TweezerMan) of The Tweezer's Edge v3 had the following comments:

You might want to try "Radio to the Past", a part of Mark Paschal's Kit suite.

After downloading and installing Kit, click on the "Tools" link on your Desktop Website, click on "Kit", then "Kit Preferences". Check the box next to "Add a "Post to date" option to the weblog post form" then click the "Save" button. This will add a "Post to" date option just below the editor window on the Desktop Website home page.

To post an entry with a date in the past, check the box to the left of "Post to" then select the date and time you want the entry to posted with.

There is a known issue with Radio to the Past if you have categories enabled on your weblog. See my post here which discusses the issue and provides a link to a Radio macro that repairs the category storyLists after they have been messed up by Radio to the Past.

and later in the same thread:

It doesn't really matter if you use Kit or some other tool or method to accomplish what you are wanting to do. The problem is in Radio's assumption that when posts are in numerical order, they will also be in chronological order. Any method you use to insert the posts that does not ensure the posts are in numerical as well as chronological order will cause problems with other parts of Radio's code.

and still later in the same thread:

What will break is the anchor part of the permalink. Let's say that current post #1 was posted on 02/01/2004. The permalink to the post would look something like this:
http://hillscap.com/2004/02/01.html#a1

After you enter the old posts with Kit, the permalink will change to the following (because post #1 will now be post #251):
http://hillscap.com/2004/02/01.html#a251

Radio itself (and your weblog pages) will be fine - Radio will update links (such as on your weblog calendar) automatically when you republish your weblog. What this would affect is someone who bookmarked or linked to an entry with the old anchor number.

For a user who clicks on a link with the old anchor (#a1), the page will still load (users will *not* see a "404 - Page not found" error), but the browser will not scroll down to the post because there is no longer any #a1 bookmark on that page. I don't think this is a critical issue - it's just something you should be aware of.

Keywords: Radio To The Past, Post To The Past, backdate, back-date, back date, change date of post, Radio UserLand