Three Dates in a Trench Coat

home tools Three Dates in a Trench Coat July 2026 An Initial Pair Two dates isn't enough. At least, when it comes to blog posts. For years, I've used created and updated as the only dates for my writing. It makes sense for pages that are written and deployed in one shot. Not so much when a draft sticks around for a few days, weeks, or years before seeing the light of day. Neither created or updated feels right for a post started last October but didn't go out until today. I want to keep the created date locked in to when I first started the piece. But, using updated doesn't make sense for the first time the status of a page goes from draft to done. Introducing: completed The solution: a third date. Our new friend completed. Posts start out with metadata that looks like this: created = 2026-06-02T12:21:48-04:00 status = "draft" They get worked on for however long then need. When they're ready, the metadata gets updated with the completed timestamp and the status is set to "done".…