Email date/timestamp is in the future

Hi @shornber!

I’m not very sure what would cause this — is there any chance your system clock is set incorrectly?

Hmm, all other emails from 3rd parties coming to my inbox have the correct time and date. And looking at my system date/time shows the correct date and time. My client and I first noticed the odd time/date situation once Mailgun was installed. When we used to send out these emails just through Cart66, in the past, the time/dates were just fine.

What is your PHP version? Also, what other WordPress plugins do you have installed? What about PHP extensions?

PHP – 5.5.38

Plugins – Cart66 Professional, Duplicate Post, Envira Gallery Lite, FancyBox for WordPress, Fix SSL/Non-SSL Links,
Foo Gallery, Gravity Forms, Header and Footer, Image Widget, Login LockDown, MailChimp for WordPress, Mailgun, MarketPress Statistics, Nivo Slider WordPress Plugin, Responsive Menu, Shortcode Kid, Social Media Widget, Solid Code Theme Editor,
SSL Insecure Content Fixer, Widget Context, WP Customer Reviews, WPMU DEV Dashboard, Yoast SEO.

Inactive plugins – 404 Redirection, Jetpack by WordPress.com, Maintenance Mode, NextGEN Gallery, Permalink Finder, Popover plugin, SEO Friendly Images, Social Sharing Toolkit,
Status, Tipsy, WP Demon, WP Facebook Open Graph protocol, WP Popup Magic, WP Testimonial Attack, WPMU DEV Videos

I’ve not installed any PHP Installations. Is there a sure fire way to check?

Thank you

Hi @shornber!

The best way to view active PHP extensions is with php -i in your shell. Otherwise, there may be a way to enable the phpinfo page, which will show you details about your installation (extensions, date and time, etc).

This is a very curious issue. I think the next thing to do would be to get access to the phpinfo page so we can see what is going on in the PHP environment.

I installed a plugin that shows more PHP info and it said this about PHP extensions: 20121212

I can provide more data if need be. Yesterday one of the confirmation emails sent out in the morning had the correct date and time, but subsequent emails did not.

Thanks

Any chance I could get a copy of the phpinfo page output? If you don’t want to post it here, you could email it to [email protected] ??

Thank you – email sent.

Thanks! Looking through it right now ??

Here is a pattern my client noticed.

In looking at the dates, there is a pattern. Jan 1st was 6 hours behind the actual order time. Jan 2nd is now Feb 1, 6 hours behind order time, Jan 3rd is now Mar 1, 6 hours behind order time. Today is showing April 1 but prior to noon orders are 5 hours behind and after noon they are 7 hours behind.

Okay there has got to be a plugin that is converting a date wrongly, then… So based on that pattern here’s what I’ve got –

Depending on your location (and it looked like you were using the America/Chicago timezone in PHP), -0600 is the UTC offset for CDT, so there’s the 6 hours behind order time. Date is odd, but easy with that pattern. If using the typical US date format, you’ve got MM/DD/YY, but (if I recall correctly), other countries use DD/MM/YY. So that’s why each day is one month ahead.

Now, just to figure out what plugin is causing this. Best I can recommend is start disabling plugins one by one to see which is setting the Date header incorrectly… I know it’s a slow and crummy way to do it, but it’s the best I’ve got. :\