daylight savings time

I hate everything about daylight saving. And I HATE having to change my clocks. So much so that I still haven’t changed my wristwatch. So having a plugin to do this for me makes me very happy. If there were a plugin for automatically changing the time my wristwatch, I’d get it….

The point I’m trying to make is that just because you don’t want the plugin doesn’t mean there aren’t many others who are thrilled to have it.

Now, if we were talking about the need for “Hello, Kings of Leon Kings of Leon lyric plugin”, I would understand the mockery. :^)

The plugin is fine, if you happen to be in an environment where it works. Automatic DST changing will likely never be in the WP core because getting it to work reliably across different servers and locales is a colossal chore. You simply can’t rely on servers having a reliable and comprehensive TZ database, assuming they have one at all. Bundling a TZ database with WP is not an option because full TZ databases are many times the size of WP. Further, they require constant updating because DST rules are subject to the whims of government.

What exactly are you saying, Ryan? Are you saying that now that I have this particular plugin installed that the time stamp will not necessarily work for all viewers of my blog even if it is working for me? Is it just because my computer happens to understand it?

Fwiw – with all the blogs I read, I don’t look at the time of the post. While I really can see that the time of posting matters to the blog owner, maybe it doesn’t to readers ?

Read Kimmo’s restrictions. This plugin only works in certain environments. These restrictions won’t affect your readers, but will affect your ability to use the plugin at all. If it’s working for you, cool. WP, however, cannot ship something with such restrictions. There are very good reasons why you don’t get DST support by default.

I see. Thanks.

I hope that wasn’t construed as a complaint that it wasn’t on the wp plugin page! I was only reporting that it was not there.

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I hope that all this talk about the daylight saving plugin hasn’t made people forget about the problem that Groove is having with the date….

I find it interesting to see what time of day the author was writing his/her entry. (I also assume that times shown on the blog match the time zone of the author.) I think it adds something to the post to know that it was written first thing in the morning, or after the evening movie was over, or after the bars had closed. ??

I also rather shorten the list of things to adjust twice (or any other number) a year than add to it. I’m glad that my plugin is helping others that feel the same way.

It would also make my experience of contributing to the WordPress community much more enjoyable if I didn’t have to read mocking comments about my handywork by official support staff on this forum. I just fail to see the value that such comments add (in the way of *support* or otherwise).

@ruckus – I was NOT mocking either you, the code OR the original request. It was more of a “What / Why / But that’s not often” in amazement rather than any sort of snorting derision. It would never have occurred to me to even request such a plugin – but then maybe I’d like a plugin that flashed up a warning 3 days before my wedding anniversary …

It was something that hadn’t occurred to me, that’s all.

Wait, I’m confused. At first I thought this was regarding the date set in the admin panel. But it seems we’re talking about how the date, or rather the time, is shown in a post? If so, why do you need a plugin to do that – there’s PHP format to imprint what timezone you’re in and incorporate DST. I use l, F j, Y @ g:i A T on my blog, but I have to agree with Podz on that fact that I never really pay attention to post times, etc. when visiting other people’s sites. (Heck not even on my own, I just like having the format there.)

Ceo, unless you live in GMT zone, or in one of the places in the world where daylight saving does not occur, you still have to go in twice a year and change the offset.

For those of us who do care about the time posted on the post AND are annoyed and/or too lazy to have to change the time offset every six months, this plugin is a very nice thing to have. Many thanks for creating it, ruckus.

Here is a list of timezones for those of us who think this plugin is useful:
https://users.wpi.edu/~nv22/calendar/TIMEZONES

Shouldn’t WP automatically determine whether it’s daylight saving time or not? Like mentioned before it’s an event that occurs twice a year and the user can’t do anything about it but has to install A PLUGIN!!!?

Shouldn’t plugins been used to provide additional functionality, rather than adding functionality that should be self-evident?

Just my two cents…

Read the thread.

I have been unsuccessful in my search for how to surround the Timezone with a titled acronym tag. For instance, if I wanted to produce:

<acronym title="Eastern Daylight Time">EDT</acronym>

This is as close as I have come….

<acronym <?php echo 'title="'. date(T). '">' . date(T); ?></acronym>

But that just puts the acronym itself into the title spec rather than the full wording of the TimeZone. Any ideas? (I’ve tried searching on php.net but being relatively green at php, I cannot decipher most of what I see there)

Excuse me for replying to myself. I’ve done further searching and am getting a little closer. I have now successfully got the figured out how to get the title spec on acronym to have the value “GMT – 0400” when it is surrounding EDT:

<acronym title="<?php echo gmdate(T). strftime('%z', $t) . '">'. date(T); ?></acronym>

But I have not found where the_time() is defined in wordpress so that I can add the acronym tag. Perhaps I’m going to have to resort to using

<?php date(H:i) ?> <acronym title="<?php echo gmdate(T). strftime('%z', $t) . '">'. date(T); ?></acronym>

except that now this produces GMT – 0500 instead of GMT – 0400 in the title spec for EDT (Eastern Daylight Time)