Every now and then I see a web site that has an old copyright date. In my mind, I always think “Look at the sucker who forgot to update his copyright year!” Then, while I was hard-coding a copyright year into the site I’m currently designing, it suddenly struck me:
How the hell am I going to remember to update this?
My immediate reaction was just to use some server-side coding to automatically display the current year. Bam, fixed.
Later, I began to ponder to myself, if someone as big and smart as Google can overlook this, perhaps there’s something wrong in doing it this way. Maybe I’m doing something wrong? I guess what I’m really wondering is why I feel compelled to keep the copyright year up to date. Is there a reason, or is my chronic OCD to blame?
If there is a good reason to keep them up to date, why don’t more developers use server-side code? I see these “mistakes” all over the place.