[Classic themes] Post preview shows current date instead of scheduled/backdated date

[sophiegyo]

Quick summary

Draft posts in preview (in a new tab) show the current date in the post meta, rather than the chosen future/past date.

Video:
https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/36608681/205617590-daeea344-72c4-4b99-be99-ac538d4924ae.mp4

Steps to reproduce

1. Start at any WordPress site (on wpcom Simple, Atomic, AND ALSO self-hosted even without Gutenberg)
2. Activate any classic theme
3. Create draft post, or edit existing post that's set to draft
4. Choose a publication date - past or future. Important that it's not the current date. Example showing future date:

5. Save draft 6. Preview post in a new tab

What you expected to happen

The post should show the correctly-chosen date.

What actually happened

The post shows the current day/date instead. My tests above are from 5 Dec 2022, which is what the preview shows.

Context

User report: https://wordpress.com/forums/topic/i-change-the-publishing-date-to-back-date-but-in-preview-it-shows-current-date-and-not-the-one-i-selected-under-publishing/

I was able to reliably replicate this on the user's site (theme: Syntax), my own Simple test site (theme: Button 2), my Atomic site (theme: Independent Publisher 2), and a self-hosted test (themes: Dara and TT1)

Platform (Simple, Atomic, or both?)

Simple, Atomic, Self-hosted

Theme-specific issue?

It is specific to classic themes - all the ones I tested produced it.

I tested:

Syntax (from user report)
Dara (self-hosted version)
Twenty Twenty-One (self-hosted version)
Independent Publisher 2
Button 2

I could reliably NOT reproduce it with FSE themes (tested: Masu, Twenty Twenty-Two, Twenty Twenty-Three, Antonia)

Browser, operating system and other notes

My device:
Mac OS 12.6
Firefox 107

EDIT: Found the Trac ticket, added a comment: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/46609#comment:8

Reproducibility

Consistent

Severity

Some (< 50%)

Available workarounds?

Yes, difficult to implement

Workaround details

If the user is willing to switch to an FSE theme, it's an "easy" workaround if you don't count how much setup they'd need to do to get the FSE theme looking like their classic theme.

There does not appear to be any other type of workaround at this time.

[cuemarie]

📌 SCRUBBING : RESULT - Replicated / Could Not Replicate / Uncertain

• Tested on Simple: Uncertain
• Tested on AT: Uncertain
• Tested on Self-hosted: Uncertain

📌 FINDINGS/SCREENSHOTS/VIDEO

• In my tests, what I found was that if I set a post's date to the future, and then saved the draft and previewed it, the date shown on the post was today's.
• However, if I set the post's date to the future, and Scheduled the post, then when I previewed the post, the date correctly showed the scheduled date.

This behavior was consistent across AT, Simple, and Self-Hosted.

Self-Hosted Example

📌 ACTIONS

• Marked as Triaged for Quality Squad review

📌 Message to Author

• @sophiegyo , based on my tests above, it's possible that this might be intended behavior. I imagine publishing/scheduling the post is what updates the post date. Just to be thorough, is there anything I've missed in my tests above that might add more context?

[aleone89]

Another report here: https://wordpress.com/forums/topic/posts-are-not-in-order-illogical-publication-date-sequence/?view=all
Theme: MistyLook (retired)

[mrfoxtalbot]

Re-pinging @sophiegyo here to clarify this ;)
Thanks!

[github-actions]

Support References

This comment is automatically generated. Please do not edit it.

• https://wordpress.com/forums/topic/i-change-the-publishing-date-to-back-date-but-in-preview-it-shows-current-date-and-not-the-one-i-selected-under-publishing
• https://wordpress.com/forums/topic/posts-are-not-in-order-illogical-publication-date-sequence

[inaikem]

Tentatively closing this since we've not heard back from the issue author. Please reopen as needed.