phpBB System Timezone?

Client Joined: Feb 03, 2005 Posts: 24 Location: New York

I'm setting up phpBB for PHP-NUKE for the first time. What do I select for the System Timezone setting on the Configuration page? I'm a Raven Web Hosting customer.

THANKS!

Site Admin/Owner Joined: Aug 27, 2002 Posts: 17088

You select YOUR timezone that you reside in.

registered · Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2005 1:35 am

I set mine to server time... Wink

Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2005 9:40 am

VinDSL wrote:

I set mine to server time... Wink

That's what it said to do in the PHP-NUKE Garage book I bought. So now I'm confused.

STEVE

Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2005 10:24 am

Steve,

Set it whatever time you want. Each user will customise it for themselves anyway. Technically you should set it for the server time zone, but it really doesn't matter.

Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2005 10:32 am

Raven wrote:

Set it whatever time you want. Each user will customise it for themselves anyway. Technically you should set it for the server time zone, but it really doesn't matter.

If I am pretty sure the majority of my forum users will be from my local area New York, should I set it to the NY time zone? Will that make it default to the NY time zone for all new users?

STEVE

Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2005 1:34 pm

Yes.

Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2005 9:36 pm

Raven wrote:

Set it whatever time you want. Each user will customise it for themselves anyway. Technically you should set it for the server time zone, but it really doesn't matter.

True! IMHO, the important thing to remember is to set everything to the same time. For instance, I use Maty's most excellent MS-Analysis. If the times in the various programs get out of synch, the stats go crazy.

In Arizona, we aren't on DST, so that complicates things. My server is in Houston, Texas, and I have to go in and change the time, in various places, a couple of times a year. On top of that, my server recognizes DST, but some of my proggies don't. Of course, I always forget this until it's too late, and there's hell to pay. LoL! Oh, well, you can't be perfect all the time...

I have to change it in, like, 5 places to get everything right again. One place will be -5 GMT, another is -6 GMT, somewhere else is -2 hours server time, blah, blah, blah. It's a real pain in the butt!

Regular Joined: Jun 23, 2005 Posts: 61

Sorry for jumping in,but i also have a timezone problem/question

I am using nuke7.6 with the latest version of pbpBB forums.

I have set the timezone in the Forum admin settings for "GMT" which is correct for me here in the UK.
but for some reason every new person that registers on the forums THEIR timezone in their profile is set to GMT+10 hrs.meaning that every new person that registers their timezone is way out by 10 hrs.
And that they have to edit the timezone in their own profile.
what else to do i need to change to fix this so that NEW members timezones are all set correctly.
E.G so that when a new member registers their timesone is auto set to GMT as well.

registered · Posted: Sat Sep 17, 2005 7:01 am

Unfortunately, base nuke doesn't even default your new users to your system default. In my opinion, just another one of those "bugs". You will either need to "hack" the Your Account module code to force it to default properly or your users will just have to change their timezones.

Personally, on web sites where my users are not "nuke savvy", I have an account approval process (I use Approve Membership Module -- do Google Search and you should fine it) and then physically change the users timezone based on other data that I collect from them. I have also used mySQL SQL update queries to do blanket "conversions".

Regards,
montego

Posted: Sat Sep 17, 2005 7:48 am

ok thanks for the reply,will just have to either get them to manually change thier timezone or install that membership approval module.
just wanted to make sure it was not something i had done wrong. Smile

Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2007 3:28 pm

Sorry for bumping this one Wink

Yet another one of those strange thingies in php-nuke. I always wondered why every new registred person has a standard timezone of GMT+10
But seems like its just a common Nuke thing. Is there no way to fix or change this?

Our server is located in germany in most of our users are from Europe, thats why i setted the phpbb timezone at GMT.

I noticed that the 'Locale Time Format' within php-nuke was set at; en_US but is this correct? I couldnt find any other input variants, would en_UK be a valid option for example?

registered · Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2007 4:29 pm

warren-the-ape wrote:

Yet another one of those strange thingies in php-nuke. I always wondered why every new registred person has a standard timezone of GMT+10
But seems like its just a common Nuke thing. Is there no way to fix or change this?

But change it to what? The user is supposed to go into his/her profile and change it. There isn't anything in the registration process right now that collects their timezone.

If you think the majority of your users are going to be in one particular timezone you could hack the code to use that instead of GMT+10.

Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2007 4:46 pm

Gremmie wrote:

If you think the majority of your users are going to be in one particular timezone you could hack the code to use that instead of GMT+10.

Yep thats exactly what I ment, cause it seems like the 'standard' is set at GMT+10 regardless of any timezone setting.

I checked out the 'Your Account' module and found some timezone stuff but all a bit yibberish to me Very Happy

Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2007 6:29 pm

No hacking is needed Smile

. Go into Forum Admin and select Configuration. Then reset the System TimeZone.

Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2007 7:04 pm

That hasn't worked for me Raven.

I believe Your_Account is doing an INSERT on user activation and leaving the user_timezone field out of the explicit values list, thus it is getting the default MySQL value. I just looked in phpMyAdmin, and it is 10, which would explain why everyone is getting GMT+10.

So, go into phpMyAdmin, find your users_table, and change the default value for the user_timezone field from 10 to whatever you want (legal values are probably -12 to 12). I am doing this right now on my site.

Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2007 7:39 pm

Strange, it works for me but I am on an older version of nuke and maybe something has changed.

Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2007 5:04 am

@ Raven
Hmm, how can I reset it when its a drop-down box?

@ Gremmie
Aah okay so its sort of 'hardcoded' in the database? Im using phpnuke 7.9 btw.
Could you tell me if it worked?

Cause I ran into another forum that redirected to this site last night Very Happy

to a sticky in which you needed to alter your mainfile.php, dammit didnt save that page.

But a little db change would be much easier i think.

Now only need to find out how i startup phpmyadmin (is that possible with winscp btw?)

Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2007 11:40 am

"Hmm, how can I reset it when its a drop-down box?"

Huh? You click the down arrow and select the option you want and then you save/update

Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2007 12:44 pm

warren-the-ape, I had a new user sign up today and he got the new default timezone value.

I don't know what winscp is, sorry. But if you are going to be a PHP-Nuke admin I highly recommend you figure out how to use phpMyAdmin. It's a very valuable tool to have. Ask you host if you have access to it.

Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2007 1:26 pm

Gremmie,

What code did you have to hack?

Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2007 1:44 pm

Raven, I didn't hack any code. I changed the default value for user_timezone in the nuke_users table in MySQL from 10 to -4 (for my case).

Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2007 2:03 pm

Then you're saying that the forum uses your user record to get the default timezone for a new user? That makes no sense at all. How would it know to use your user record?

Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2007 2:47 pm

Okay, finally know how to use phpmyadmin, d.amn was thinking to difficult didnt knew i could just access it through my browser Embarassed

Normally another guy does those db things but he isnt around a lot, I am responsible for all the front-end stuff so never bothered Cool

Anyway, it was indeed set at 10, like you said Gremmie, its now back at 1 (GMT+1) cause most of us are in that timezone, now lets wait and see if it worked Wink

Edit: Aah great it works, super sweet Groovy

Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2007 5:37 pm

Raven, no read my other post. Your_Account is inserting new values into the users table when a user is activated to give the new user a row. However it is not explicitly providing a value for the user_timezone field, thus the default value for the TABLE is being used instead, which is 10. One could modify the INSERT statement to use the forums config value for the timezone, but that isn't happening right now.