Thread

I know that there have been other threads on this, but the more I read them, the more confused I get.

I have a channel that I’m using as an appointment scheduler, where I’m posting entries with future dates, and I’m running into issues when I post entries for dates after the time change in the fall.

For example, when I post an entry and set the time to 10:00 am, it gets changed to 9:00 am. To further complicate things, I have users in two different time zones.

How do I get EE to stop trying to help me with time? I want to completely ignore DST and time zones, so if any user posts an entry at 10:00 am, it shows up as 10:00 am regardless of the user’s time zone, the server’s time zone, or the status of daylight savings time.

aircrash,

I want to completely ignore DST and time zones, so if any user posts an entry at 10:00 am, it shows up as 10:00 am regardless of the user’s time zone, the server’s time zone, or the status of daylight savings time.

The option was there to make the date fixed or localized. See here in the screenshot.
It doesn’t seem to be there in latest version. let me check on this one for you can get back to you

John, did you ever find an answer to this?

aircrash,

Apologies for delay in replying.

Our dev thinks those dropdowns were displayed via bug- they never existed for the date tab- entry/comment/expiration date.  The field that would be required for those never existed according to the update files that the dev looked through.

So my suggestion as an option for the entry date doesn’t exist and never has done. 

The dev’s suggestion was that if you don’t want it change at all- it’s stored utc.
You could display UTC/GMT time, because it’s just flat accurate and no confusion.
But if you are displaying localized/normal, then it’s going to vary as you change your dst settings.

Thanks John.

How do I set it to display UTC/GMT time? The docs seem to imply that EE uses UTC time by default. In some places, they imply that this allows for localization, and in others, they imply that it doesn’t.

The first link also states that there is a setting in the options tab of the publish page to set whether DST is active on a per-entry basis, but I don’t see that option, or any way to enable it.

I think the docs could really use quite a bit of cleanup on this topic. There are a lot of vague generalizations, seemingly inaccurate information, and settings spread across multiple CP pages, but nowhere is there a clear explanation of how the settings work.

Hi, aircrash,

You would use date variable formatting to display your times in UTC/GMT.

I agree the docs could use some clean up in regards to DST and these options, and will ensure that this is something that we review.

Does the above recommendation help?

Lisa,

I think I understand date variable formatting, but I still think I’m missing something. I’m using this to display the time in my templates: {entry_date format="%h:%i"}, but if I create a future entry in December and specify the time as 9:00 am, it shows up on the site now as 8:00 am.

Is there something I need to do differently to get the system to ignore DST ?

Hi, aircrash.

Are you having your members switch things over when DST goes on or off?

I would prefer that members not have to switch anything.

What I really want is to completely ignore DST and localization, and have 7:00 PM be 7:00 PM no matter when or where it is published or viewed, but EE out of the box doesn’t seem to be able to do that; or at least the docs aren’t clear on how to do it.

The problem I’m having isn’t really an issue at the time of the DST switchover, it is a problem now. My site is basically an appointment scheduler, where each channel entry represents a booked appointment. People are booking appointments now for November, and their appointment time is off by an hour because of the DST settings. All I am asking for is advice on how to disable the DST “correction” that EE is trying to do.

I’m sure there is a reason that EE is set up this way, but when would having the system automatically correct for daylight savings time like this actually be useful? It seems like this would be something that people either wouldn’t care about, i.e., “it doesn’t matter what time of day my entry was published”, or they would want to disable, like I do; but I can’t think of a single case where it would be useful.

Aircrash,

have you tried working with DST set to “No” in Admin-> Localization Settings? Set DST to “No” and make sure the Server Time Zone setting is correct and you should be OK. The DST setting will only “mess” with things if you turn it back on.

Cheers,

That seemed to fix things. I had switched it to “yes” earlier because it seemed to fix some date issues when i first built the site, but I think I probably just had the settings wrong, since the majority of the site’s users, the server and I are all in different time zones.

Thanks.

Aircrash,

Awesome! I’m glad it was that easy to fix. Now the key will be *never changing it*, otherwise it will affect the times of your entries.

Feel free to start a new thread anytime you need assistance.

Cheers!