This post I’m writing in Windows Live Writer should publish with the correct date and time this time.

My first attempt with Microsoft’s new beta blog editor resulted in the post I wrote being published with the wrong date – it showed the date as November 30, 1999 at 2:00am – even though the correct date and time were set in the Writer.

Guessing it was a WordPress date/time issue, I posted a help request in WordPress Support. That didn’t produce any help, though. But a comment I left in the MSN Groups Windows Live Writer forum did produce a possible solution from a fellow WP/WLW user:

I solved my problem by changing the representation of the date in my blog. I was using the following format: “16 august 2006” but changed it to “16-08-2006” and now the post are published with the correct date.

The date format for my blog set in WordPress > Options is the default one you get when you first install WordPress, ie, “August 18, 2006” (in PHP code: F j, y). But the date format that actually displays here is “18 August 2006” (PHP: j F Y).

That format is set in the theme I use (K2), specifically in theloop.php file in the K2 theme directory.

I tested WLW again with my Sandbox blog – and the post published with the correct date (as it did when I tested it with my Live Spaces and WordPress.com blogs). That blog shows the date as “18/08/06” (PHP: j/m/y) which is the default format as set in the theme on that blog (Hemingway). It doesn’t use theloop.php, though, for its date setting.

So, I’ve changed the date format in this blog by editing theloop.php to show it as 18/08/06 just to see if this solves this problem.

Let’s see what happens…

[Post-publish edit] It worked – the post published with the correct date and time.To summarize:

1. If the date format set by the theme in this blog is “18 August 2006,” Windows Live Writer publishes posts with an entirely incorrect date/time setting – out by 7 years – even though the correct setting is shown in Windows Live Writer.
2. Windows Live Writer publishes a post with the correct date and time if the format is set in the theme as “18/08/06.”

So it looks to be an issue with WLW. I hope the developers fix this with the next beta.