# Customizing input date format in frontmatter

**URL:** <https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/customizing-input-date-format-in-frontmatter/34619>\
**Category:** support\
**Created:** [September 8, 2021, 1:46am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/customizing-input-date-format-in-frontmatter/34619 "2021-09-08T01:46:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![blackthorne](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/blackthorne/32/15101_2.png) [@blackthorne](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/blackthorne)\
**Post date:** [September 8, 2021, 1:46am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/customizing-input-date-format-in-frontmatter/34619/1 "2021-09-08T01:46:10Z")

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Hi,

is it possible to customize the input date format used in frontmatter? I am not referring to the date format displayed by the rendered pages but the format used to specify the date in frontmatter, more specifically to set the dates of my posts as ‘2019.11.10 09:00:00’ as opposed to ‘2019-11-10 09:00:00’.

Thanks in advance!

P.S.: The reason for this (other than personal preference) is that I am using gollum (the wiki engine) to edit Hugo’s markdown files and it breaks when I use a format such as ‘2019-11-10 09:00:00’. The format above works.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![blackthorne](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/blackthorne/32/15101_2.png) [@blackthorne](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/blackthorne)\
**Post date:** [September 22, 2021, 4:51pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/customizing-input-date-format-in-frontmatter/34619/2 "2021-09-22T16:51:01Z")

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A solution to my problem is to wrap the time in single quotes (’). I’m using the same format (‘2019-11-10 09:00:00’ ) but once I add the quotes both Gollum and Hugo are able to parse it properly, example:  
`date: ‘2019-11-10 09:00:00’`  
It’s not quite what I asked for but solves the same problem.