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Should guide titles carry the year, and should it change automatically every January?

· 2 min read
Jon-Michael Lastimosa
Jon-Michael Lastimosa
Senior Web Developer

The question: The headless guides' search titles say "(2026)". Can that year update itself, so next year they say 2027 without anyone editing them? And should the year go in the page's H1 too?

Context​

A year in a search title helps a fast-moving topic win the click ("is this guide current?"). But it has to stay true: a "2027 guide" with 2026 screenshots and outdated versions is worse than no year at all, and search engines discourage making pages look fresher than they are.

Options considered​

  • The calendar year at build time, plus a rebuild every 1 January. Fully automatic, but every page would claim the new year whether or not anyone had checked it.
  • The year of the page's last commit. Automatic too: editing a guide moves its year on. An untouched guide keeps its old year, which is accurate, and doubles as a list of guides due for review.
  • The year in the H1 as well. The heading describes what the page is; a year there makes the page itself look dated and adds nothing a reader needs.

Decision​

Titles use a {year} placeholder that the docs build fills from each file's last commit (parseFrontMatter in docusaurus.config.js; the deploy fetches the full git history). The H1 stays timeless, and a line under it shows "Updated " from the same commit. The January review still happens, as "check the guide and commit it" rather than "edit the year".

Why​

It is automatic without ever being untrue: the year a title shows is always a year someone actually worked on the page. Readers get the freshness signal where they look (right under the heading), and search results get it in the title, both from one source of truth.