How do I output a letter that matches a format code?

Escape it with a backslash. For example, to get «о 14:30», write \о H:i — without the slash the letter would be recognised as a format code.

I changed the format in the settings, but the date on the site is still the old one. Why?

Most often the theme prints the date with its own call and a hard-coded format, ignoring the settings. Look in the theme files for get_the_date or the_time with an argument — that is where the format is set.

Why does the time on the site differ from the real one?

Check the time zone in Settings → General: a city must be selected, not a UTC offset. An offset does not account for daylight saving time. And make sure the date is printed through wp_date, not date.

Which format to choose for machine reading?

ISO 8601: c in the PHP format. That is exactly what structured data, RSS and the datetime attribute of the time tag need.

Date and time format in WordPress with a live preview

Date and time format in WordPress: a builder with a live preview

Build the format with the buttons or type it in by hand — and see straight away how the date will look in Ukrainian, Russian or English. Plus a ready-made string for the settings and a correct PHP call for the theme.

Format string The same codes as in the “Custom” field on the Settings → General page.

Preview language The site language, not the browser language.

Month case for F The switch affects the preview only: on the site WordPress picks the grammatical case itself.

In Ukrainian and Russian a month name has two forms, and wp_date() chooses between them by the shape of the format itself: if the day comes before F (j F, d. F), the genitive is used («10 серпня»); in every other case the nominative is («Серпень 2026»). This is done by wp_maybe_decline_date(); for English it never kicks in at all. That is why «Серпень 10, 2026» is impossible to get: the day–month order is itself the case switch.

Presets

Day and month

Year and time

Separators

Any Latin letter in the format is a code. To output the letter itself, put a backslash before it: \a\t gives «at», while an unescaped at gives «pm31» (a = am/pm, t = days in the month).

Preview — the current date

Enter a format string or choose a preset.

Updated every second. Month and weekday names come from your browser's Intl.DateTimeFormat — in WordPress they come from the translation file, so the case or the dot in abbreviations may differ.

Reference moment	Result

Exactly the dates where a format usually breaks: a single-digit day, midnight in 12-hour notation and the turn of the year.

What you will output the date with in code wp_date() recommended The site time zone and the site language. Added in WP 5.3, it replaced everything below. date() A PHP function. It knows nothing about the site time zone or the language. date_i18n() The old WordPress function. It translates the names but expects an already-offset timestamp. strftime() A percent-based format (%d.%m.%Y). Found in older themes.

What the snippet should change

Override even the format the theme has hard-coded

Enter a format string.

Paste it into the “Custom” field under the format radio buttons. WordPress shows a live example next to it — it should match the preview above.

Enter a format string.

Enter a format string.

The file goes into wp-content/mu-plugins/ — that folder is picked up without activation and survives a theme change. The alternative is the end of the child theme's functions.php.

Code	What does it mean	Now

All PHP format codes with their current values; the ones used in your string are highlighted. Those marked depend on the time zone — the browser's here, the server's on the site.

Everything is computed in your browser: the format, the date and the generated code are never sent anywhere.

Why the date in the theme is not translated into the site language

WordPress has three ways to output a date, and two of them are broken. date() is a plain PHP function. It knows nothing about the site locale or its time zone, so the month will always be in English and the time will be the server's. date_i18n() does translate, but it has been deprecated since WordPress 5.3 and has time zone problems. wp_date() is the only correct option: it honours both the locale and the site's time zone. Separately: strftime() was deprecated in PHP 8.1 and removed in PHP 9. Themes that still use it will start throwing warnings, and later fatal errors. One more detail, specific to Ukrainian: in the format “5 січня” the month is in the genitive case, while in the heading “Січень 2026” it is in the nominative. These are different forms and one cannot be substituted for the other. The tool shows both.

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Date and time format in WordPress: a builder with a live preview

Why the date in the theme is not translated into the site language

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