When you include a date merge field in your content, for example, the Publication Date of a post, you can customize the format.
You will most likely choose a default date format under My Account, but if you need, you can further customize a date field in your email template.
After inserting a date merge field, for example ~RSS.date1~ for the publication date of the first post, you can add a date format in parenthesis, like ~RSS.date1(M d, Y H:i)~
The most common characters you’ll likely use include:
| Character | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
D | Three letter day of the week | Mon through Sun |
j | Day of the month | 1 to 31 |
l (lowercase ‘L’) | Day of the week full name | Sunday through Saturday |
S | English ordinal suffix for the day of the month, 2 characters | st, nd, rd or th. |
F | A full month name, such as January or March | January through December |
M | Three letter month name | Jan through Dec |
n | Numeric month | 1 through 12 |
Y | Four digit year | 1999, 2003, 2025 |
a | Lowercase Ante meridiem and Post meridiem | am or pm |
A | Uppercase Ante meridiem and Post meridiem | AM or PM |
g | 12-hour format of an hour without leading zeros | 1 through 12 |
G | 24-hour format of an hour without leading zeros | 0 through 23 |
h | 12-hour format of an hour with leading zeros | 01 through 12 |
H | 24-hour format of an hour with leading zeros | 00 through 23 |
i | Minutes with leading zeros | 00 to 59 |
s | Seconds with leading zeros | 00 through 59 |
T | Timezone abbreviation, if known; otherwise the GMT offset. | EST, MDT, +05 |
For a full reference of possible date formats, see PHP’s Date Format table.
Dates will be displayed in the Time Zone that you set under My Account.