Displaying modification dates for markdown pages?

[h-enk]

Discussed in #1242

^{Originally posted by StefanSalewski May 19, 2024}
Generally, I like it very much when web pages display a creation date, or date of last editing. For some pages that might not be needed, but often it is useful. I have wasted already much time studying pages found by Google, just to discover later that the page was written years ago and the content is fully outdated.

For HTML pages it is easy to add a date display somewhere, I even found a way to use a Hugo shortcode to add the current date automatically.

But most of my content files are markdown. OK, I could insert a date somewhere in the text. But I would prefer a dedicated location, and if possible use of the date value from frontmatter lastmod entry. I spent some time searching for something like that, but could not find it. One possible solution might be the footer menu, which show typically an entry "Privacy Policy". But then the date field would be select-able, which is generally not desired. (Well, when thinking about it, a select-able date field, containing a link to diff of latest changes would be an option.) But I would prefer a plain read-only date field, like the "Brought to you by" text at the lower right of each page.