Why is .PublishDate set to 0001-01-01 00:00:00 +0000 UTC?

I would like an indication on my site of the exact date and time when Hugo built the site. So I tried using .PublishDate, but it always shows up as 0001-01-01 00:00:00 +0000 UTC. How can I get the correct publish date? Thanks!

Publish date is based on the date you set in frontmatter of your posts. This indicates that it isn’t set.

For build date, see:

http://discuss.gohugo.io/t/how-to-get-a-footer-with-build-time

I’m having a similar issue.

Given the following frontmatter:

+++
Homepage = ""
Title = "rainbow dash"
Twitter = ""
date = "2016-12-08T20:55:58-06:00"
type = "speaker"
+++

The value returned by {{ .PublishDate }} is 0001-01-01 00:00:00 +0000 UTC

I understand that this is the result of date being set incorrectly (or rather, not set at all), but I can’t figure out how it’s not set?

My guess is:

I would agree, although date in that case is not being set by me, but by hugo new.

One a whim, I did try to remove the quotes (although they were added by hugo new, and it didn’t seem to make any change.

Try using pubdate = 2016...

Date and PublishDate are two different things.

I get this date in taxonomy URL
This is what I get in sitemap.xml

<url>
<loc>http://example.com/tags/</loc>
<lastmod>0001-01-01T00:00:00+00:00</lastmod>
<priority>0</priority>
</url>

Have you tried {{ .Now }}?