This comment at it.gen.nz » The Mobile Wars sparked me to go in search of the plugin Colin mentions:
WP has a timezone parameter you can fiddle with, which is what I do. But it doesn’t automatically update to following daylight saving changes.
Googling throws up WP plug-ins that apparently look after automagically. But this is low-priority enough that I haven’t tested it yet.
Changing the time setting in the WordPress Dashboard to reflect Daylight Savings has been annoying me for a long time. Usually I forget, and now with 5 blogs to sort out twice per year it’s 10 times as annoying.
But when I looked for a plugin, I found this is one of many annoyances that have been fixed in the recently released version of WordPress:
On June 10th, 2009, WordPress Version 2.8, named for noted trumpeter and vocalist Chet Baker, was released to the public. …
Highlights
- … Support timezones and automatic daylight savings time adjustment …
Hooray! Now we can choose a city in our timezone from a rather long drop-down list and WordPress will do the adjustment automatically. Tip for Kiwis: we’re down near the bottom of the long list.
I do have a small problem though: these two screenshots are from two different blogs that have both been updated to WordPress 2.8, but one thing is not like the other:
· 
One blog shows the new Timezone support, while the other still shows the old handling, where you have to change the timezone yourself.
Those are nice touches on the new version though. Now I’ve selected Auckland as a city in the same timezone as me (I’m in Wellington). The WordPress Dashboard tells me that we’re currently in Standard Time and the next switch to Daylight Savings takes place on 04 October 2009.
Except, it doesn’t:
New Zealand Standard Time is currently defined in the Time Act 1974 as meaning the 12 hours in advance of Co-ordinated Universal Time. The Department of Internal Affairs administers the Act.
Daylight Saving Time
Daylight Saving commences on the last Sunday in September, when 2.00am becomes 3.00am, and ends on the first Sunday in April the following year, when 3.00am becomes 2.00am.
- Daylight Saving ended on Sunday 5 April 2009 (when clocks went back one hour).
- It begins again on Sunday 27 September 2009 (when clocks go forward one hour).
[Via : The Department of Internal Affairs: Other Services - Daylight Saving.]
Oops. To be fair, our Daylight Savings time was extended in the last year or two, so perhaps whatever tables are being used for this don’t reflect that extension.
I think I’m going to be spending some time today not only troubleshooting why 2 out of my 5 blogs aren’t giving me the new timezone chooser, but also filing a bug report.
I think these were the first 2 blogs I updated — maybe something was changed in the automatic updater before I got around to the other 3 blogs.
KnowIT by RSS
Miraz
Thanks for spotting this. I look forward to the table that drives it being corrected for New Zealand time!
Cheers
Colin
I’ve supplied feedback to the WordPress folks in this thread at the forums:
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/280112?replies=1#post-1103651
1. The reason one blog shows the old way and the new one shows the new way is a matter of PHP versions. The server has to be running a PHP version of 5.1 or higher to show the new stuff, since WP is using the new timezone support in PHP 5.
2. The timezone list (and the associated changeover times) come directly out of PHP itself, which incorporates the Olson timezonedb into it. If the dates are wrong, then you may be running an older version of PHP without the new data. Upgrading PHP to a more recent version OR using PECL to download the latest timezonedb will correct that information. WordPress itself does not contain any timezone names or data, it’s getting all that information straight from PHP on your server.
Many thanks for that explanation, Otto.
While I resolved the problem of the menu not showing by ensuring PHP 5 was being used, I hadn’t realised that the timezone database is local to my server rather than some ‘centralised’ thing out there in the wide world.
I’ll contact my hosting provider about that one.
I think the timezone list showing (or not) must be more subtle than that. I’m running multiple hosts on one server that are configured identically (I thought!) and yet some WP 2.8.3 installs show the list of cities and some don’t!
Ignore me – I’m being daft, sorry. I misremembered installing WP into someone else’s hosting environment. All my hosts are still trying to use the old timezone support, in spite of happily running PHP5. Can’t see why though
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