# Alter topic creation date
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/alter-topic-creation-date/168256
**Category:** Development
**Created:** [October 26, 2020, 8:57am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/alter-topic-creation-date/168256 "2020-10-26T08:57:54Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@dariKG](https://meta.discourse.org/u/dariKG)
#### Post date: [October 26, 2020, 8:57am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/alter-topic-creation-date/168256/1 "2020-10-26T08:57:54Z")
Hi everyone,
I am writing because I am trying to populate my forum with posts made by a set of users on another old forum.
What I would like to do is to create these threads - and the subsequent posts they may have - keeping the original creation date.
Altering the “created\_at” field at POST time does not work. I am working via the API.
TL;DR If a thread made on the old forum was posted on Oct 14, '11, at 07:45 am, how do I keep the original posting date&time when importing it into a new Discourse forum?
Thank you all for your help!
D.
---
### Author:  [@merefield](https://meta.discourse.org/u/merefield)
#### Post date: [October 26, 2020, 8:59am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/alter-topic-creation-date/168256/2 "2020-10-26T08:59:28Z")
There are a load of example migration scripts in the core repo and some how to’s on here to exploit them - why use the API?
---
### Author:  [@dariKG](https://meta.discourse.org/u/dariKG)
#### Post date: [October 26, 2020, 11:37am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/alter-topic-creation-date/168256/3 "2020-10-26T11:37:11Z")
@merefield, thanks, I’ve seen some migration scripts, but for the time being, I’m using the API directly.
I’m just wondering whether what I want to do (pre-date a thread) is even possible at all on Discourse.
---
### Author:  [@hawm](https://meta.discourse.org/u/hawm)
#### Post date: [October 26, 2020, 12:43pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/alter-topic-creation-date/168256/4 "2020-10-26T12:43:55Z")
> [@dariKG](#):
>
> Oct 14, '11, at 07:45 am
Try to passing the `created_at` variable more specific if you did not.
I just look into the Discourse source code, it using `Time.zone.parse` to parse your `created_at` date string, for your example, it result
```plaintext
pry(main)> Time.zone.parse("Oct 14, '11, at 07:45 am").to_s
=> "0011-10-14 07:45:00 UTC"
```
how about an RFC 3339 string
```plaintext
pry(main)> Time.zone.parse('2011-10-14T14:00:00-10:00').to_s
=> "2011-10-15 00:00:00 UTC"
```
---
### Author:  [@dariKG](https://meta.discourse.org/u/dariKG)
#### Post date: [November 21, 2020, 9:17am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/alter-topic-creation-date/168256/5 "2020-11-21T09:17:29Z")
Thank you! That did the trick 🙂