install changes modified date

#950587
  • Resolved Erin
    Rank Math free

    Hello,
    I was hoping to switch to RM from Yoast. I currently have my blog – Butter and Bliss – in staging as I’m doing a total re-design. I have attempted to install RM 3 times now (each with a fresh staging site), and each time, the date on all my posts changes to today.

    I have tried to troubleshoot: currently using Astra + Elemetor. In WordPress customizer > single post > meta, I had the toggle for date to ‘modified’. I toggled to publish, and installed a new staging site. All posts show today.

    In my live site, I have tested the dates on a few posts in Rich Results, and they all show fine for published and modified.

    For reference, I put the site into staging over a week ago to start the redesign, and all of the dates were fine. I then decided today that I wanted to switch to RM, and that is when the dates changed.
    Fortunately, the site is in staging. Unfortunately, I’ve had to delete all the work I have done as I don’t want to push the site to live with every post as the same date. Something is happening when I install RM.

    Of the plugins that I *think* may be interfering would be ‘Change Last Modified Date’ (which I would uninstall if I install RM) and Perfmatters. But I don’t know for certain if they are impacting anything at all.

    Is there somewhere else in WP that I should be looking to prevent this from happening. Or is there a setting in RM that I am missing to preserve dates when I install it?

    Any help is appreciated. I’d love to make the switch, but won’t be able to if I can figure this out.

    Erin – Butter and Bliss

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Hello,

    We apologize for the issue you are facing with the modified dates changing to today after installing Rank Math. Thank you for providing detailed information about your setup and the troubleshooting steps you’ve already taken.

    When you install Rank Math, it should not automatically change the publish or modified dates of your posts. However, there are a few things you can check:

    1. Lock Modified Date Option: Ensure that the modified date is locked if you want to prevent it from being updated unnecessarily. You can find this option in the post settings when editing a post. Here’s how to lock the modified date in the Gutenberg editor:

      • In the post editor, navigate to the Settings panel.
      • From the Page tab, scroll down to find the Lock Modified Date option and enable it.
      • Click Save to update the post.
        Lock Modified Date in Gutenberg
    2. Check Other Plugins: Since you mentioned using the "Change Last Modified Date" plugin, it might be worth uninstalling it before installing Rank Math to see if that resolves the issue. Conflicts with other plugins can sometimes lead to unexpected behavior.

    3. Sitemap and Schema: After changing dates, ensure that your sitemap and Schema markup are updated correctly. You can check this using the Rich Results Test tool to confirm that the datePublished and dateModified properties reflect the correct dates.

    4. Elementor Settings: Since you are using Elementor, ensure that there are no settings within Elementor that might be affecting the post dates.

    If after checking these options you still encounter issues, please reply to this ticket, and a human agent from the Rank Math Support team will take over and assist you further.

    We appreciate your patience and understanding as we work to resolve this issue for you!

    Erin
    Rank Math free

    I deactivated the following plugins, and it still changed every post date to today. Any help is appreciated.

    Change last modified date
    Perfmatters
    Elementor
    Astra

    Hello,

    Thank you for contacting us and sorry for any inconvenience that might have been caused due to that.

    Can you please share a screencast with us by using a tool like https://loom.com so that we can check this further for you?

    Also, please share some affected page URLs so that we can check them as well.

    Looking forward to helping you.

    Hello,

    Since we did not hear back from you for 15 days, we are assuming that you found the solution. We are closing this support ticket.

    If you still need assistance or any other help, please feel free to open a new support ticket, and we will be more than happy to assist.

    Thank you.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

The ticket ‘install changes modified date’ is closed to new replies.