Daylight Saving Time (DST) kicked in this morning in Ireland, the UK and many other parts of the world when the clocks went back 1 hour. The US is next week from what I remember. If your server is using UTC time, check Options->General, the “Times in the weblog should differ by” textbox in your blog and adjust accordingly!
Here’s a discussion on the WordPress.com forums about the issue from last year and I found this extend idea that has already been implemented in the Time Zone plugin, but it only works on UNIX-like systems and if you’re not using PHP’s safe mode.
PHP5 has the date_default_timezone_set function, but not enough hosts are using PHP5 to make that a universal choice. It would be nice if all this was done automatically, but hopefully with the further adoption of PHP5 that will happen eventually.
And don’t forget to check your other gadgets, especially digital cameras. I doubt many of them know anything about timezones!
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It’s seems real problem for countries with DST.
I am in GMT +7, there is no DST to apply.
The clock I ALWAYS forget is the one in the car.
The automatic change of time and date in my mobile is set to on – the time did not change this am.
Now for the cmaera…
Thanks Donncha
It’s a twice a year task.
2 times in 365 days.
The consequences of not making the change just do not matter.
I get this request at wpcom – and only only ever from US residents.
There are somethings that WordPress should not do – and this is one. As for a plugin…… why?
It’s not a life or death situation, but it would be nice if web apps change the time according to the locale.
I do recall one time when the hour mattered – back in 2005 when I posted these photos it was close to midnight on the day after the party. Because I had forgotten to set the gmt_offset the previous October the post was initially blogged after midnight.
Since I want to post to my photoblog every day I had to quickly fix the timezone and fix the date on the post. I don’t use dates in the URL so that made it much easier 🙂
Yep, I had to go in and fix mine this morning. I woke up and had no clue what time it was. I have almost all automatic clocks. Half of them turned back, half didn’t. UGH! LOL
Sorry to be pedantic but we actually changed back to GMT from DST (or BST – British Summer Time).
Other than that, thanks for the reminder!
I am in GMT -6, there is no DST to apply anyway too..
I almost forgot about this… It really would be handy if the offset was managed automatically. But, it’s only twice a year. =)
I find the statement interesting that not enough hosts have PHP5. Which hosts have you come across that don’t have PHP5 and aren’t dedicated?
There is a different between servers running PHP5 vs PHP4 and those that have the capability but not being used. Those statistics are a lot harder to come by.
The best solution I’ve found is to have the times output as Unix timestamps, which are interpreted on the client as local times.
Here’s the WP plugin: http://trevorcreech.com/geekery/wordpress/user-relevant-timezones/
Ah, Daylight Savings … I’d forgotten about that.
I was tired of changing my clocks twice a year, so decided to move to a country where it wasn’t necessary 😛
Thanks for the good tip.
For those who are not aware, the USA reverts to standard time one week from today on Sunday, November 4.
Earlier this year, the US Congress moved daylight saving time forward one week (previously it lasted until the last week of October) mostly in response to lobbying efforts by the candy manufacturing industry. The candy companies wanted to extend DST to include Halloween so that children who participated in the annual ritual would have more time to collect candy while there was still daylight.
Personally, I hope that someday DST can be abolished and we can all agree on a standard year-round time format. DST is a silly, obsolete idea that really has no place in a 24/7 global economy and information age.
Unfortunately, as we have seen in the USA, it has become a political football for special interest groups, and is also perpetuated by the notion that DST is somehow “saving daylight” and making days last longer. Of course, those of us who understand science and astronomy know that this is rubbish; the amount of daylight changes according to the position of the Earth facing the sun along with the tilt of the Earth’s axis and is not affected by how anyone sets their clocks.
Hopefully, as people become more educated about this issue we can create a movement to reduce government interference in this area of our lives. It is time for the separation of Clock and State!
Whats funny is that at work today (I’m in Canada) someone showed up to work one hour early. They thought this was the weekend to change it. they thought I was nuts when I mentioned if you live overseas.
I wrote a script to run on my cron tab to do this adjustment on my self hosted WP blog which runs php 4.4.7. I might have too much time on my hands.
when i was a child, China also adopted a Summer Time, for several years. It might be a good way of saving daylight. but most of the Chinese people thought it was too much of a bother. why change back and forth? daylight is there. if you want to save it, just set your schedule back or forward. for example, change your working hours from 8 to 4. haha, i might be greeted by lots of brickbats from daylight saving experts if they think doing so is no bother….
Alex Coles has written a plugin to handle the change to/from British Summer Time (BST) – definitely worth checking out.
“Earlier this year, the US Congress moved daylight saving time forward one week (previously it lasted until the last week of October) mostly in response to lobbying efforts by the candy manufacturing industry.”
Your joking right?
I was a lame duck attempt to save electricity, not a candy conspiracy.
Canada has decided to follow the US on the DST change, its 3 weeks earlier in the spring as well. My vote is to abolish its use.
This was a royal pain in the arse for sys admins back in the spring.
http://www.davehildebrand.com/archives/67
I remember when I was working in Australia in 2001 we had to deal with the fallout from daylight savings being moved for the Sydney Olympics the previous year.
I hate daylight savings time. I leave my site on Standard Time in protest.
In Australia daylight saving time for some states started last weekend. So five states have daylight saving and 2 don’t. NT and Qld, as the northern 2 states, decided there are so many hours of light it wasn’t worth the bother. 🙂
Dave,
No, it’s not a joke! A quick Google search turned up the site where I first read about this issue. The candy manufacturers had intermittently lobbied Congress to get DST pushed forward to include Halloween. It was done under the guise of children’s safety, although there has been much speculation that they were also attempting to increase their sales in the process. Here is a relevant snippet:
“For decades, candy manufacturers lobbied for a Daylight Saving Time extension to Halloween, as many of the young trick-or-treaters gathering candy are not allowed out after dark, and thus an added hour of light means a big holiday treat for the candy industry.”
Source link: http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/k.html
For more references, searching on the keyword, “daylight saving time candy Halloween” will bring up several more results that discuss this issue in more detail.
However, you are also correct in stating that DST was a lame attempt at energy savings. In fact, this has been one of the primary arguments that has perpetuated its support and has made it difficult for us to get it abolished. The candy lobby thing was a way of piggybacking on the “saving energy” argument so that the DST time period could be moved forward by one more week. I did not mean to imply that it was a “conspiracy” exactly- just a special interest thing. We should never underestimate the silliness of American politics!