phpBB and Daylight saving time (DST)
March 25, 2007
phpBB is one of the most, if not the most, widespread internet forum solutions. While it offers an enviable amount of features, especially through the use of various MODs, the stock codebase still doesn’t support some pretty basic features such as daylight saving time.
What I have been doing so far with the forums I maintain is, I updated the the database directly and set the time zone of every user at the beginning and the end of the DST period. I also set the default time zone in the admin panel, so the guests would also see the correct time.
While this might be an acceptable solution for a forum where all of the users are in the same time zone, it won’t work for international forums.
I guess I am not the only one patiently waiting for the upcoming phpBB 3.0 release (codenamed Olympus). It is supposed to bring so many bigger long awaited (attachments) or desperately needed (better CAPTCHAs)
It seems this is not the case. Not much has changed in regard to this in phpBB 3. There still isn’t a “default” option in the user’s preferences, which would always “mirror” the forum’s setting, and once the user registers his selection is saved and will not reflect any further forum-wide changes.
The only new feature is a Daylight saving time in effect on/off radio button in user and admin preferences, which makes it a bit more obvious for the users to change it on their own, but it’s only a partial solution.
Posted in Software
November 2nd, 2007 at 11:38 pm
how true.
I’m always astonished by the lack of basic features in phpBB without any valid reason.
often there are mods who do that, but they don’t apply them to the main branch.
how senseless.