In Drupal there are specific theming functions to customize this:

This is the default (for nodes):

function theme_node_submitted($node) {
  return t('Submitted by !username on @datetime',
    array(
      '!username' =&gt; theme('username', $node),
      '@datetime' =&gt; format_date($node-&gt;created),
    ));
}


This is the default for comments:

function theme_comment_submitted($comment) {
  return t('Submitted by !username on @datetime.',
    array(
      '!username' =&gt; theme('username', $comment),
      '@datetime' =&gt; format_date($comment-&gt;timestamp)
    ));
}


To override them, add these functions in your template.tpl.php of your theme, and change the name to MYTHEME_node_submitted. And now you can customize it:

Drupal 6 uses by default the format 'D, m/d/Y - H:i' , to understand the meaning of these letters, see full PHP doc here

To display in 12 hour format, replace H by h like this:

format_date($node-&gt;created, 'custom', 'D, m/d/Y - h:i');


API reference about format_date()

Change published date to 12 hour time
I hear people say "I can get this or that out of these skins" but how do you know what you can get out of a skin?
