General Forum Suggestion

[IraBobParticipant]

Keith,
The timestamp on each post looks to be set at GMT? Is there a way for the user to customize that time to his/her own time zone?

[volounteerParticipant]

@irabob

That would confuse my pc and probably also wordpress sequencing of messages.

[IraBobParticipant]

My PC must be smarter than yours. It doesn’t get confused on other forums where, as part of your profile, you can set your local Time Zone.

[volounteerParticipant]

@irabob

I have my pc set to UTC. No confusion about ‘savings’ time or time zones or anything else.

When different times come in from local time zones with local time stamps used my PC sorts them by the timestamp which is WRONG as it put some of them in the wrong sequence. I want to see messages in sequence not have to try to sort them myself.

AH forum has the timestamps abolutely correct.

[IraBobParticipant]

I’m guessing that the forum’s “clock” is set to UTC. If your PC is also set to UTC, then you wouldn’t gain or be harmed by other people having the option to read the posts with the timestamp adjusted to their own Time Zone. No confusion for you, and less confusion for others. Is there a problem with that concept?

[volounteerParticipant]

@irabob

depends how wordpress works

my email sorts by time on the post
so if they are in a time zone far away they may get put off the page and missed

[Søren SteinmetzParticipant]

In that perspective it is not WordPress but the Forum programming that needs to support it.

95+% of all forum sites on the internet, for the last 25+ years, have all been able to do that.

All emails are sent with the UTC timestamp, and a notion of the timezone set on the users computer,
when you set your mailclient, it automatically changes all shown date/time stamps to your timezone.

This merely boils down to the way the forum has been programmed, if they have the setting in the backend or not.

[volounteerParticipant]

@Søren Steinmetz

Then I vote to stay with UTC not try to convert it to local time for a given sender or reader.
My PC clock is set to UTC and prevents issues with DST and other tweaks that are done locally which differ from real time.

[SteffenRParticipant]

The timestamp on each post looks to be set at GMT

the time zone of the A&H headquarter btw

[Mfk0815Participant]

In my other job I am working for a customer, and this customer is selling logistic solutions around the world. It is a common practice to store timestamps in UTC but displaying the timestamp on the user interface using the local timezone. It makes for most users less or no sense to work with a time value from London when he or she is located in San Francisco or Tokyo or Moskow. If someone wants touse UTC, no problem, set the local time to UTC and thats it. If it is configureable everybody will be happy, if not only less persons will be happy.

[IraBobParticipant]

Soren, then you would have the option to not change anything on your computer! That’s great! But you DO understand that others might like the option to convert the entries in a discussion into their local Time Zone, so as to make it easier to follow the discussion. As https://community.allen-heath.com/members/mfk0815/ said, a great many forums allow this as part of how the forum is programmed. It’s not unusual and it certainly shouldn’t be difficult.

[Søren SteinmetzParticipant]

I have never spoken against the feature in the forum, as I wrote 95+% of online forums I have worked with for the past 25 years all have that ability.

That includes several sites build on the WP (WordPress) platform.

As I said, it boils down to the specific forum, if they have made the feature or not, as it really is a simple operation (depending on coding coherency)

[volounteerParticipant]

Why not just look at the time on your screen in the bottom right corner and you can see the difference in time vs the post timestamp.
I am not sure what the exact problem is that you are trying to solve.

The AH forum tells you how old a post is too.
So if you really need to know about when a post was made it can be done easily.

I fail to see the need to know what timezone or exactly when in local time (mine or theirs) somebody made a post.

[Mfk0815Participant]

Its not only the time value, but alsothe time format. I would love to see the usualtimein CET, so now its 20:03 19.1.2021 local time.

[volounteerParticipant]

@mfk0815

Everybody has different preferences

I strongly prefer tttt(nr)Z DOW(abbrev) dd(nr) mm(words) yyyy(nr)
EG 20:03Z tues 19 Dec 2021
[ Z = Std code for utc ; J= local ]

One size fits nobody
Perfection is impossible
AH has done what they did and the rest of us should live with it

I am still not sure why that is a real problem

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