Keep Pages Recent Script?

[Deverill]

This is a two part question:

1. Is there an easy and safe (for TCH) script I can use to do a Un*x "touch" on my website files so they have a recent date? I'd like to do it about once per week, not all the time or even every day.

 

2. Is there a reason this is not a good idea? I know crawlers at one time devaluate pages that haven't recently changed and I suspect they still do. Parts of my site are historical and don't have need to change so should I do this?

 

I know, I could use DW to add an extra space on my template and let it update everything but that's inefficient and I may start using alternative methods of web development thanks to the PHP gang and some of their ideas.

 

Thanks

[surefire]

I don't know if it will help with the search engines, but there's no harm, that I know of.

 

With php:

$date = date("j/n/Y");

 

print $date;

 

More info and ways to format the function here:

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.date.php

[TCH-Rick]

I can't speak to whether it is a good idea or not. As for the how, why bother with a script to do a "touch" like effect when you can just use touch?

 

You can set a cronjob in CPanel and once a day run this command:

 

touch /home/username/public_html/*

 

That will take care of all the files in the public_html directory. You would need to have a similar one for other directories if you wanted to include them.

 

touch /home/username/public_html/otherdir/*

 

etc.

[Deverill]

Perfect! Thanks Rick!

 

Surefire, would a php function such as that make it look like the date-last-modified is today to the web crawlers since it is a dynamic part of a static 3-month-old page? I'm still not sure how these things work but with the help here it's great learning about it!

[surefire]

The script just displays the date in a predetermined format.

 

I have no idea how the various search engine spiders look at it. Sorry.

[Deverill]

Don't apologize! This is, afterall, the script forum and the question of how has been answered - now it should probably move to the SEO forum to discuss the effect it has on the SEs.