BST >> GMT

Ionic · 3rd November 2003, 20:00

Anyone going to tidy up BST >> GMT time setting?

/I

jo · 3rd November 2003, 21:16

Umm, forgive me for asking, but what exactly is wrong with it?

I posted this particular message at: 2003-11-03 Mon 20:16:30 UTC/GMT

and the legend along the top says: Posted: 2003-11-03 Mon 20:16:30 -- All times are GMT

There is a setting in your forum preferences to alter the displayed timezone.

Ionic · 3rd November 2003, 23:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by jo

There is a setting in your forum preferences to alter the displayed timezone.

Oops

So it does! Thanks jo. One person has to ask all the dumb questions for the benefit of everyone else

I have some friends who run a history forum on ezBoard servers, they had to fix the master time themselves, this place obviously runs rather differently. In case you fancy it, go to:
http://pub55.ezboard.com/btalkinghistory

/I

jo · 3rd November 2003, 23:49

Forums based on vbulletin and ezboard softare packages have a number of bizarre timezone bugs as the software developers really didn't understand how timezones work and didn't cater for all possibilities. The guys developing phpBB seem to have had a bit more savvy about them in that respect.

Firefox · 4th November 2003, 02:03

As a slight aside, I believe many UNIX based systems only work on GMT, so unless you have a high level overide, there's no daylight saving or any such nonsense. And for a spinning disc in a dark case, who cares about daylight

jo · 4th November 2003, 02:18

The problem with some forum software is that some servers work on local time (not the local Standard Time, or on GMT, or on UTC all year round), so the server time gets moved either forwards or backwards an hour at the change of the seasons. For other forum software this then results in an incorrect rendering of UTC as the forum software has only one fixed offset, and cannot cope with changing server offsets from GMT/UTC. The users can change their timezone up and down, but this doesn't fully solve the problem when the actual GMT or UTC time is being misreported by an hour to start with. Newew versions of vbulletin now include an admin function that allows the server time offset from UTC to be set, and altered at will.

raccoon · 4th November 2003, 11:44

The only neat solution would be to include client-side scripts in the web pages that delegate the task of converting UTC to local time to the client's computer.
I can imagine this approach has its own problems however.