# Change to DD Mmm / Mmm 'YY for post dates

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/change-to-dd-mmm-mmm-yy-for-post-dates/13625>\
**Category:** UX\
**Created:** [2014年三月11日 05:44 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/change-to-dd-mmm-mmm-yy-for-post-dates/13625 "2014-03-11T05:44:52Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 35

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**Author:** ![tophee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/tophee/32/73406_2.png) [@tophee](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tophee)\
**Post date:** [2017年五月8日 13:00 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/change-to-dd-mmm-mmm-yy-for-post-dates/13625/35 "2017-05-08T13:00:17Z")

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Just in case anyone wants to change from the Month-Day format to the (internationally more common) Day-Month format: to find all relevant Text Content elements (quite a few actually), it’s best to **search for `MMM`**.

UPDATE: I just realized that searching for `MMM` will not give you all relevant Text Content elements. (For example, dates in emails will still remain the same. Try searching for `date`.

Some of the text elements that you need to change are using a different notation, such as `%B %-d, %Y` I believe it is Ruby. To understand and change them, this might be useful:

> Format directives:

> Date (Year, Month, Day):  
> %Y - Year with century if provided, will pad result at least 4 digits.  
> -0001, 0000, 1995, 2009, 14292, etc.  
> %C - year / 100 (rounded down such as 20 in 2009)  
> %y - year % 100 (00..99)

> %m - Month of the year, zero-padded (01..12)  
> %\_m blank-padded ( 1..12)  
> %-m no-padded (1..12)  
> %B - The full month name (`January'') %^B uppercased (`JANUARY’‘)  
> %b - The abbreviated month name (`Jan'') %^b uppercased (`JAN’')  
> %h - Equivalent to %b

> %d - Day of the month, zero-padded (01..31)  
> %-d no-padded (1..31)  
> %e - Day of the month, blank-padded ( 1..31)

> %j - Day of the year (001..366)

> Time (Hour, Minute, Second, Subsecond):  
> %H - Hour of the day, 24-hour clock, zero-padded (00..23)  
> %k - Hour of the day, 24-hour clock, blank-padded ( 0..23)  
> %I - Hour of the day, 12-hour clock, zero-padded (01..12)  
> %l - Hour of the day, 12-hour clock, blank-padded ( 1..12)  
> %P - Meridian indicator, lowercase (`am'' or `pm’‘)  
> %p - Meridian indicator, uppercase (`AM'' or `PM’')

> %M - Minute of the hour (00..59)

> %S - Second of the minute (00..60)

> %L - Millisecond of the second (000..999)  
> The digits under millisecond are truncated to not produce 1000.  
> %N - Fractional seconds digits, default is 9 digits (nanosecond)  
> %3N millisecond (3 digits)  
> %6N microsecond (6 digits)  
> %9N nanosecond (9 digits)  
> %12N picosecond (12 digits)  
> %15N femtosecond (15 digits)  
> %18N attosecond (18 digits)  
> %21N zeptosecond (21 digits)  
> %24N yoctosecond (24 digits)  
> The digits under the specified length are truncated to avoid  
> carry up.

> Time zone:  
> %z - Time zone as hour and minute offset from UTC (e.g. +0900)  
> %:z - hour and minute offset from UTC with a colon (e.g. +09:00)  
> %::z - hour, minute and second offset from UTC (e.g. +09:00:00)  
> %Z - Abbreviated time zone name or similar information. (OS dependent)

> Weekday:  
> %A - The full weekday name (`Sunday'') %^A uppercased (`SUNDAY’‘)  
> %a - The abbreviated name (`Sun'') %^a uppercased (`SUN’')  
> %u - Day of the week (Monday is 1, 1..7)  
> %w - Day of the week (Sunday is 0, 0..6)

> ISO 8601 week-based year and week number:  
> The first week of YYYY starts with a Monday and includes YYYY-01-04.  
> The days in the year before the first week are in the last week of  
> the previous year.  
> %G - The week-based year  
> %g - The last 2 digits of the week-based year (00..99)  
> %V - Week number of the week-based year (01..53)

> Week number:  
> The first week of YYYY that starts with a Sunday or Monday (according to %U  
> or %W). The days in the year before the first week are in week 0.  
> %U - Week number of the year. The week starts with Sunday. (00..53)  
> %W - Week number of the year. The week starts with Monday. (00..53)

> Seconds since the Epoch:  
> %s - Number of seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC.

> Literal string:  
> %n - Newline character (\n)  
> %t - Tab character (\t)  
> %% - Literal ``%‘’ character

> Combination:  
> %c - date and time (%a %b %e %T %Y)  
> %D - Date (%m/%d/%y)  
> %F - The ISO 8601 date format (%Y-%m-%d)  
> %v - VMS date (%e-%^b-%4Y)  
> %x - Same as %D  
> %X - Same as %T  
> %r - 12-hour time (%I:%M:%S %p)  
> %R - 24-hour time (%H:%M)  
> %T - 24-hour time (%H:%M:%S)

(Source: [Class: Time (Ruby 2.2.0)](https://ruby-doc.org/core-2.2.0/Time.html)).

To summarize my experience of changing the time and date format to a more internationally compatible format: it is quite a chore as it feels like you have to make the same change over and over again in different variables. It would be great to eventually see this as a more user friendly site setting and I assume this is already on the team’s list. So here is my +1 for that.

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