# Are Web pages date stamped? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 19, 2002, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-web-pages-date-stamped/104570 "2002-04-19T20:06:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2002, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-web-pages-date-stamped/104570/1 "2002-04-19T20:06:03Z")
Some sites courteously post an updat notice on their pages, some don’t. Is there a way I the (unhacking) surfer can look at the page – it’s file attributes, or whatever, to find out how old it is? ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2002, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-web-pages-date-stamped/104570/2 "2002-04-19T20:08:06Z")
not really and I am with you in that I am often pissed when I have no clue of how old the information on the page may be. ---
**Author:** ![SmackFu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/53a042/32.png) [@SmackFu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmackFu)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2002, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-web-pages-date-stamped/104570/3 "2002-04-19T20:38:18Z")
Try the form on this page with your url: [http://www.delorie.com/web/headers.html](http://www.delorie.com/web/headers.html) If you’re lucky, the resulting headers will have something relevant in the Last-Modifed field. If you’re not, it’ll just be the current time, or the field will be missing altogether. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2002, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-web-pages-date-stamped/104570/4 "2002-04-19T21:10:00Z")
File -\> Properties through your browser will give you a “last modified” date which may help. ---
**Author:** ![evilhanz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ba8739/32.png) [@evilhanz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/evilhanz)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2002, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-web-pages-date-stamped/104570/5 "2002-04-19T21:16:41Z")
A properly configured web server will supply various date headers along with the content you reqyested. Please note that MANY web servers are not configured to provide this optional information. The date you find on a web page has been placed there by the web page developer or by a piece of code that reads the file dates on the server. ---
**Author:** ![handy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2002, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-web-pages-date-stamped/104570/6 "2002-04-19T22:23:25Z")
With netscape 6+, just click on VIEW, Page Info, etc…it gives some info. IF you can get a FTP display for a site you can look at the ftp data. ---
**Author:** ![butter\_pie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/aca169/32.png) [@butter\_pie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/butter_pie)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2002, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-web-pages-date-stamped/104570/7 "2002-04-20T00:50:01Z")
I just clicked on the link above, and it was right about the page on my site I entered. I know my webserver records the timestamps when I upload files via FTP. I didn’t know people could look them up that way. Pretty spiffy. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![dqa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dqa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dqa)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2002, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-web-pages-date-stamped/104570/8 "2002-04-20T04:18:10Z")
Most of the information at the page linked above is, as **handy** mentioned, found under View-Page Info in Netscape. In fact, I just used this feature in another thread minutes before reading this one. I had always assumed Netscape and IE were pretty much equivalent, but I can’t find this feature in my IE 5.5. Did they really omit this, or am I just not searching hard enough? ---
**Author:** ![handy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2002, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-web-pages-date-stamped/104570/9 "2002-04-20T15:46:29Z")
dqa, its under File:properties Yep, those are the page properties not the program properties. sigh ---
**Author:** ![dqa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dqa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dqa)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2002, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-web-pages-date-stamped/104570/10 "2002-04-21T02:36:06Z")
They don’t seem to return the same information. It seems sensible to list the properties of the page under File-Properties, if you consider the page to be a file. However, when I punch that up for [this site](http://www.un.org/unrwa/finances/contribution.htm) in IE, I get created and modified April 19, 2002. When I use View-Page Info in Netscape, I find it was last modified December 12, 2001. 😕 ---
**Author:** ![Pythagoras](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/48db29/32.png) [@Pythagoras](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pythagoras)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2002, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-web-pages-date-stamped/104570/11 "2002-04-21T02:40:25Z")
The ‘webpage’ is a collection of files, no doubt those files have a timestamp on the server’s file system. ---
**Author:** ![snermy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d6d6ee/32.png) [@snermy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snermy)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2002, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-web-pages-date-stamped/104570/12 "2002-04-21T03:22:57Z")
If you’re using Internet Explorer, you can try typing “javascript:alert(document.lastModified)” (without the quotation marks) in the address bar. Doesn’t work if the site has updating ads, or if the info is unavailable—you’ll just get the current date/time if that’s the case. ---
**Author:** ![columbusCL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecc23a/32.png) [@columbusCL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/columbusCL)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2002, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-web-pages-date-stamped/104570/13 "2002-04-21T14:21:25Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by snermy \* > \*\*If you’re using Internet Explorer, you can try typing > “javascript:alert(document.lastModified)” > (without the quotation marks) in the address bar. > Doesn’t work if the site has updating ads, or if the info is unavailable—you’ll just get the current date/time if that’s the case. \*\* I just tried this on one of my pages and it said it was last modified Dec. 20, 1969. 😕 I know it’s been updated in the last month or two. Why the bizarre date?