Time Issues

[Nintendo-Daily]

If I am a guest, my forum time is:

All times are GMT -4. The time now is 10:40 AM.

If I am logged in as a user, my forum time is:

All times are GMT -5. The time now is 9:40 AM.

Any ideas?

[kh99]

I think when you are a guest it uses the default time zone from the settings in the ACP, but when you're logged in it uses whatever the user has chosen in the userCP options.

ETA: There is also "Enable Daylight Savings" for guests under "Date and Time Options", maybe it has to do with that?

[Nintendo-Daily]

Weird, under vBulletin Options > Date and Time Options, I have the default time zone set to (GMT -5) Eastern Time, which is correct. Also, Daylight Savings time is enabled. What else could be causing this issue?

[Lynne]

Check the time on your server. vBulletin gets it's time from the server. If the server time is off, your forum time will be off.

[Nintendo-Daily]

So, contact my host, right Lynne?

[Lynne]

If you don't have access to your server to look for yourself, then yes, contact your host.

[Nintendo-Daily]

It turns out that it's the time on my server. I called them to see if they could change it and they say they couldn't change the time for the entire server. He said I could fix it with a bit of PHP programming though. Is this true?

[Lynne]

Are you serious? lol. Just change the setting in your vboptions then.

[Nintendo-Daily]

Weird, under vBulletin Options > Date and Time Options, I have the default time zone set to (GMT -5) Eastern Time, which is correct. Also, Daylight Savings time is enabled. What else could be causing this issue?

I already did that. The issue is when guests are viewing the forum...which displays the server time.

[kh99]

.... Also, Daylight Savings time is enabled.

Could that be the problem? Shouldn't it be disabled now? (Edit again - I was right the first time).

[Nintendo-Daily]

Her's some information...

In 2006, daylight time begins on April 2 and ends on October 29.
In 2007, daylight time begins on March 11 and ends on November 4. [New law goes into effect.]
In 2008, daylight time begins on March 9 and ends on November 2.
In 2009, daylight time begins on March 8 and ends on November 1.

Does this mean that I needed to disable DST (in vBulletin Options) on November 1st?

[kh99]

According to the manual (http://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/vboptions_group_datetime),

"This setting is not automatic and it will need to be changed when the timezone changes twice a year."

That's surprising - now I wonder why there wasn't a bunch of people asking about that when the time changed. Maybe it works automatically on some servers?

Or maybe most people just have the guest time set to GMT.

[Nintendo-Daily]

Disabling DST in vBulletin Options didn't change anything for the guest time. It still displays GMT -4 just as it did before. Oh well, the only conclusion that I can draw from this is that the vBulletin software looks at the host server time.