question about the time

[cbetts432]

Hi,
I have a question about the time I have noticed most of the post time is always posted as the 24 clock instead of the 12 hour clock, and it is confusing to try to figure out the time from 24 to 12 is there reason for this. John b

[Bob Webtech]

Hi John,

Times are normally displayed in 24 hour time on this board because that's my preference, so that's what I've set as the default. Even so, you don't have to accept this default. You can modify the "Date format" field in your Profile to display dates and times in other formats.

This "Date format" field is admittedly one of the more "geeky" settings in phpBB software, so most people just accept the default (and some people try resetting it but fail to specify it in the correct syntax). The correct syntax is explained if you click the "date()" link to the left of the "Date format" field in your Profile settings. I will illustrate how you can reset this field if you want 12-hour time.

The current default for "Date format" on this board is:

Code: Select all

Y-m-d H:i:s

where the first part (Y-m-d) displays the date in International (ISO 8601) format as explained, for example, at http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-time.html and the second part (H:i:s) displays hours:minutes:seconds with the hour in 24-hour format including leading zeros.

If you prefer 12-hour format, you might reset this in your own Profile to:

Code: Select all

Y-m-d g:i A

where the date portion is the same as above, but the hour is displayed in a 12-hour format without leading zeros, the seconds are omitted, and the time is followed by an AM/PM suffix.

While this "Date format" field determines the format with which times are displayed to you, the actual values of those times are determined by the "Timezone" setting in your Profile, which must be set correctly in order for times to be displayed in your local time. And, as I've pointed out in other postings, if you live in a place that observes daylight savings time (or "summer time"), you'd need to adjust your Timezone twice a year to account for it. The board software can't adjust for daylight savings time automatically because the laws about daylight savings times differ widely in different places around the world (not to mention the northern and southern hemispheres, where summer and winter are reversed).

When we upgrade the phpBB 2.x software that we're using now to phpBB 3.0, the Timezone setting will be more self-explanatory than it is now.