{{oldest:%B %d, %Y}}

The {{oldest:%B %d, %Y}} substitution parameter references the oldest created or modified time of a node, or any of its child nodes, and formats the date/time value using an strftime format string in the rvalue portion of the parameter.

In other words, the {{oldest:%B %d, %Y}} parameter lets you display the oldest date that is found in a given node, or any node found underneath it in the tree.

This can be especially useful for setting copyright dates, or displaying the date that anything in a section of your web site was last updated.

For example, this node has the following Created and Modified headers set:

Created: 2026-06-13T15:55:09-04:00
Modified: 2026-06-13T15:55:09-04:00

However, this node also has a child node, with the following headers set in the distant past:

Created: 1970-01-01T00:00:00-00:00
Modified: 1970-01-11T00:00:00-00:00

Because the dates on the child node are in the past (relatively speaking), here is what the {{oldest:%B %d, %Y}} substitution parameter evaluates to on this node:

January 01, 1970

The {{oldest:%B %d, %Y}} parameter checks all of the dates for every node in the tree, starting from the current node and working its way down, and evaluates to the oldest date that it finds in any of the nodes.

On this node, this evaluates to:

© 1970 Foo Bar, Inc.

The format string has a lot of different options. See the Python datetime strftime() reference or the strftime(3) man page for further details.

Compare this with the {{created:%B %d, %Y}}, {{modified:%B %d, %Y}}, and {{latest:%B %d, %Y}} parameters.

Tags: parameters