Forum Timing is Messed Up

[Bueller_007]

The timing for posts on the forum is completely wack.

#1
I'm travelling, so I have my forum time zone set to GMT. Copying from my (freshly-reloaded) forum page at present:
You last visited on 24 Apr 2006 13:27 GMT
The time now is 24 Apr 2006 19:10 GMT

There's a post in the "All About Japanese" forum by Jason dated as follows:
25 Apr 2006 00:44 GMT
Which led me to believe that he was somehow posting from the future.

When I checked the real GMT time on another website (http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/), I found that it was not actually 19:10, Apr. 24, it was 7:10, Apr. 25. The GMT time for the forum is 12 hours slow.

#2
I have my date display set to: "d M Y H:i T" (the default value). When I change my time zone from "GMT" to "GMT+10", it says:
You last visited on 24 Apr 2006 23:27 GMT
The time now is 25 Apr 2006 5:10 GMT

GMT time has changed! So, according to the forum, GMT time is dependent on the user! Of course, this is nonsense. GMT time is absolute. It seems like the "T" option of the date display string is not implemented properly. You have to either remove the option completely or implement time zone names (GMT+10,etc.).

#3
This wacky timing is leading to strange post orderings in the forum. For example, check this page:
http://www.japanesepod101.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19

Stallman posted at "25 Apr 2006 03:29 GMT". I responded to his post at 7:05 AM (GMT) on April 25th, but because the forum's GMT is 12 hours behind, it got marked as "24 Apr 2006 19:05 GMT", and therefore the forum believes that I posted before him. My reply is actually ABOVE his in the thread, even though I was responding to him.

Your mileage may vary because of problem #2, but regardless of the time that is displayed, you will see that my post is above his, even though I posted a reply to him. This is going to cause absolute confusion on the forums if it is not remedied.

I believe the forum software may be accepting the user's timezone as input upon each post. You don't want this. Upon posting, the forum should ignore the poster's timezone completely, use its own internal clock to assign a time to the post in GMT, and use the user's timezone only for display purposes.

I don't know how the software package works, but I would assume that it would do this automatically for you once the time zone issue in #1 is straightened away.

[Eran]

Thanks for pointing this issue to us. I am 99.99% certain the time zone issues you speak of are now resolved. The root cause of the problem was the timezone resetting itself on our server after it was rebooted twice from a major power outage at the datacenter it is hosted at. Our server time is typically set for GMT +9 (Japan time) but after the reboot it was defaulted back to PST.

I will keep a close eye on things and ask that you do the same as we certainly don't want post timing to be out of whack!

[Bueller_007]

Your mileage may vary because of problem #2, but regardless of the time that is displayed, you will see that my post is above his, even though I posted a reply to him. This is going to cause absolute confusion on the forums if it is not remedied.

An example/test of the problem I just outlined. My original post was done in GMT time, but by setting my timezone to GMT-11, my reply gets placed ABOVE the original post.

Or not! Looks like you've fixed the problem in the interim. Thanks!

[Bueller_007]

Thanks for pointing this issue to us. I am 99.99% certain the time zone issues you speak of are now resolved. The root cause of the problem was the timezone resetting itself on our server after it was rebooted twice from a major power outage at the datacenter it is hosted at. Our server time is typically set for GMT +9 (Japan time) but after the reboot it was defaulted back to PST.

I will keep a close eye on things and ask that you do the same as we certainly don't want post timing to be out of whack!

Issue #2 hasn't been solved, however. All posts still show "GMT" (even though my timezone is now set to "GMT+11"), and the so-called "GMT time" changes whenever I change my forum settings. The "T" option of the date display string isn't implemented correctly.