Thanks Kovid,
I tried inserting the code, but when saving the recipe, it bails out with an error: (BTW, timefmt works,

, thanks for the tip.)
class sundayLeader(BasicNewsRecipe):
cover_url = 'http://www.johnsilva.ca/covers/sleadercov.jpg'
title = u'Sunday Leader'
timefmt = ' [%Y, %m %d, %a]'
publisher = 'Sunday Leader'
conversion_options = {'series':'News Articles', series_index: 2}
description = u"News Articles from Sunday Leader Website"
oldest_article = 7
max_articles_per_feed = 100
auto_cleanup = True
feeds = [(u'News', u'http://www.thesundayleader.lk/feed/')]
=== Error ======
calibre, version 0.8.58
ERROR: Invalid input: <p>Could not create recipe. Error:<br>name 'series_index' is not defined