To remove dates from your Media files uploads in WordPress, go to your WordPress Dashboard, then go to Settings > Media, and uncheck the box next to “Organize my uploads into month- and year-based folders”. This option is checked by default on new WordPress installs.
Remember to hit Save Changes.
Why would you remove dates from your WordPress file uploads?
When it comes to organization, it would make more sense to organize your posts and files by category, which would be useful if you were to export all your files at once and reupload them on a different platform than WordPress. But dates I got no use for.
It’s rare that you see a modern webpage that displays dates in the URL (whether it’s URL for a blog post or an embedded image/ file), and for a few reasons.
First of all, people are biased against time. NEW sells better than OLD, this is a fact. If an article/story appears old (which nowdays could mean 6 months or less) it will get less views than if it’s fresh.
By displaying dates in your ULR’s you’re putting yourself at a disadvantage, because people may disregard your post simply because it’s older — even though your content could still be just as relevant as when you published.
A lot of articles also get updated every year, which means that their relevancy could go from being outdated to totally up-to-date. In that case it doesn’t make sense to have 2017 in your ULRs (whether it’s a blog post or media files) if your content got updated for 2019.
Another reason is the length of your URLs. Short URLs generally do better in terms of traffic and general SEO. There’s no reason to make your ULRs take up more lines than necessary, it makes them harder to read. For example, compare these two ULRs:
https://yourwebsite.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/the-name-of-yourfile.jpg
https://yourwebsite.com/wp-content/uploads/the-name-of-yourfile.jpg
What benefit does the date add to the URL in terms of readability? Nothing.
Do you agree/disagree?
Is there a good reason to use dates on Media files in WordPress? Let me know in the comments section, I‘m always interested in feed back and I respond to everyone!
