Question

This is the php code for date format on my web page

 function starkers_posted_on() {
    printf( __( 'Posted on %2$s by %3$s', 'starkers' ),
        'meta-prep meta-prep-author',
        sprintf( '<a href="%1$s" title="%2$s" rel="bookmark"><time datetime="%3$s" pubdate>%4$s</time></a>',
            get_permalink(),
            esc_attr( get_the_time() ),
            get_the_date('Y-m-d'),
            get_the_date()
        ),
        sprintf( '<a href="%1$s" title="%2$s">%3$s</a>',
            get_author_posts_url( get_the_author_meta( 'ID' ) ),
            sprintf( esc_attr__( 'View all posts by %s', 'starkers' ), get_the_author() ),
            get_the_author()
        )
    );
}

it gives this

 Posted on <a href="#" title="23:50" rel="bookmark">
       <time datetime="2012-03-31" pubdate="">March 31 2012</time>
       </a> by <a href="#" title="View all posts by me">me</a>

What I want is to wrap Month, date, and year separately inside divs like this only on the main page:

<div class="month">March</div>
<div class="date">31</div>
<div class="year">2012</div>

Answer 1

You can do this by passing in a format string parameter into the get_the_date() function like this:

You could do something like this:

sprintf('<div class="month">%s</div>', get_the_date('F'));
sprintf('<div class="date">%s</div>', get_the_date('j'));
sprintf('<div class="year">%s</div>', get_the_date('Y'));

UPDATE

Or like this in your index.php file (from your themes folder):

<div class="month"><?php get_the_date('F'); ?></div>
<div class="date"><?php get_the_date('j'); ?></div>
<div class="year"><?php get_the_date('Y'); ?></div>

The format strings use here are as follows:

• F = Month (as a word)
• j = Day of the month (number)
• Y = Year (as 4 digits)

Check the docs here.