Displaying the last updated date instead of the submitted date

In this recipe, we will be changing the contents of the $date template variable which, by default, displays the creation date of the node, with the node's last updated date instead. This is useful in situations where the freshness of content depends on when it was last updated rather than its overall age.

Getting ready

We will be using the myzen theme created earlier in this book as the example theme in this recipe. It is also assumed that the node.tpl.php file is available in its templates folder.

How to do it...

Manipulating the $date variable can be performed using the following steps:

1. Navigate to the myzen theme folder at sites/all/themes/myzen.

2. Open the template.php file in an editor.

3. Look for the myzen_preprocess_node() function; if unavailable, create a skeleton() function of the same name.

4. Edit it so that it effectively functions as outlined in the following. Any pre-existing changes will need to be merged appropriately.

   function...