Guild Launch News
Check your Timezone Settings!
It's that time of the year again. Check your guild's TimeZone settings!
The most important thing is that the time is displayed properly, not the semantics of GMT adjustments. The U.S. where our servers are is currently in Daylight Saving Time. So the "Standard" Timezone is offset by One Hour.
U.S. Eastern is Currently GMT -4, so adjust as appropriate.
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/city.html?n=25
Double check your guild timezone and your personal timezone and make sure your guild calendar widget shows the time, and local time properly and you are set.
If you have events scheduled already their time won't change.
-Stephen
The most important thing is that the time is displayed properly, not the semantics of GMT adjustments. The U.S. where our servers are is currently in Daylight Saving Time. So the "Standard" Timezone is offset by One Hour.
U.S. Eastern is Currently GMT -4, so adjust as appropriate.
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/city.html?n=25
Double check your guild timezone and your personal timezone and make sure your guild calendar widget shows the time, and local time properly and you are set.
If you have events scheduled already their time won't change.
-Stephen
Thanks for the reminder. Doesn't even phpBB2 have a forum admin checkbox option to enable/diable Daylight Savings? Can't we enable this option? Thanks.
cipher_nemo wrote:
Guild Launch isn't the same as the forum. We have time settings all throughout the application and we handle time differently than phpBB does to make scheduling easier. Post dates are one thing, but scheduling future events at a fixed time requires a different approach. We plan to add some logic so that users don't have to modify the Timezone settings later.
-Stephen
Thanks for the reminder. Doesn't even phpBB2 have a forum admin checkbox option to enable/diable Daylight Savings? Can't we enable this option? Thanks.
Guild Launch isn't the same as the forum. We have time settings all throughout the application and we handle time differently than phpBB does to make scheduling easier. Post dates are one thing, but scheduling future events at a fixed time requires a different approach. We plan to add some logic so that users don't have to modify the Timezone settings later.
-Stephen
Ok, but what about now? The PHPBB forums are all showing the incorrect time. I know under a standard PHPBB system I can adjust the time, but that functionality has been removed under the guildlaunch implementation of it (or if it hasn't I can't find it any place). We need to have an option to fix the forum time as well, since it's an hour off.
Shadowkn¡ght wrote:
The timezone setting in phpBB Admin sets the base timezone of the server. We don't give you access to it because that setting is for where the server is located, not the user. Unlike traditional phpBB installations we know that info already and so we pre-configure it. And allowing anyone to change it would be unecessary.
There are two timezone settings. Your guild time, and your personal time. If they are both set correctly with your current local GMT offset (accounting for DST, etc.) then the forums show the time just fine. The guild timezone is set on the Guild Settings screen in the Admin area. Your personal timezone is on your User Profile page. If you are seeing times wrong in the forums, then your personal timezone is probably set incorrectly.
-Stephen
Ok, but what about now? The PHPBB forums are all showing the incorrect time. I know under a standard PHPBB system I can adjust the time, but that functionality has been removed under the guildlaunch implementation of it (or if it hasn't I can't find it any place). We need to have an option to fix the forum time as well, since it's an hour off.
The timezone setting in phpBB Admin sets the base timezone of the server. We don't give you access to it because that setting is for where the server is located, not the user. Unlike traditional phpBB installations we know that info already and so we pre-configure it. And allowing anyone to change it would be unecessary.
There are two timezone settings. Your guild time, and your personal time. If they are both set correctly with your current local GMT offset (accounting for DST, etc.) then the forums show the time just fine. The guild timezone is set on the Guild Settings screen in the Admin area. Your personal timezone is on your User Profile page. If you are seeing times wrong in the forums, then your personal timezone is probably set incorrectly.
-Stephen
Hrm. Ok that did indeed do the trick. But it's rather counter intuitive. It would be nice if the guild time setting carried over into the phpbb settings (which I understand the reason they can't) of if there was a way to force all user profiles to follow the guild's time zone setting.
Shadowkn¡ght wrote:
Your users are all in different timezones. We can't force the users to use the guild's timezone. It's not their timezone. For the forums, the only timezone that matters is the user timezone.
The system uses the two timezone for different purposes.
For Forums
Let's say you have two users, one in Eastern and one in Central. They set their User Profile timezone as appropriate. When the Eastern user makes a post they see the post time as 10:00am Eastern, when the Central user views the post they see the time as 9:00am Central. This way the post times aren't garbled out of sort mess.
For Calendar & Raid Events
Most guilds find that using in-game server time is the most understandable common time reference for all members. Instead of converting to local times, they just schedule things for the in-game time. So we set things up this way. The guild time sets your games server time to use a reference point for most of the other times in the system. This way when you set a raid for 6:00pm Server Time the system can display that and use the user's timezone to tell them when that is locally in the hover. Since your game's server time is different than our web server's timezone we have to provide the extra timezone setting. This way you can tell the system how to adjust the user's local time.
For calendar events and raids, the time is a fixed time so 6:00pm means 6:00pm game server time. The hover shows the user's local time and uses the difference between the guild timezone and user timezone to calculate that.
Theoretically we could clarify this by changing the guild timezone to be called "Game Server Timezone".
-Stephen
Hrm. Ok that did indeed do the trick. But it's rather counter intuitive. It would be nice if the guild time setting carried over into the phpbb settings (which I understand the reason they can't) of if there was a way to force all user profiles to follow the guild's time zone setting.
Your users are all in different timezones. We can't force the users to use the guild's timezone. It's not their timezone. For the forums, the only timezone that matters is the user timezone.
The system uses the two timezone for different purposes.
For Forums
Let's say you have two users, one in Eastern and one in Central. They set their User Profile timezone as appropriate. When the Eastern user makes a post they see the post time as 10:00am Eastern, when the Central user views the post they see the time as 9:00am Central. This way the post times aren't garbled out of sort mess.
For Calendar & Raid Events
Most guilds find that using in-game server time is the most understandable common time reference for all members. Instead of converting to local times, they just schedule things for the in-game time. So we set things up this way. The guild time sets your games server time to use a reference point for most of the other times in the system. This way when you set a raid for 6:00pm Server Time the system can display that and use the user's timezone to tell them when that is locally in the hover. Since your game's server time is different than our web server's timezone we have to provide the extra timezone setting. This way you can tell the system how to adjust the user's local time.
For calendar events and raids, the time is a fixed time so 6:00pm means 6:00pm game server time. The hover shows the user's local time and uses the difference between the guild timezone and user timezone to calculate that.
Theoretically we could clarify this by changing the guild timezone to be called "Game Server Timezone".
-Stephen
the majority of our members are in the same timezone with our game server (Arygos, EDT), and the few who are not are used to having to convert.
The option could be given to make all timezone settings 'server time' which would simplify it. I understand the reasoning behind the way it works. It just feels a little complicated for the average random forum user to figure out. Heck I'm a system administrator myself (EMC SAN) and I didn't figure it out until I asked here. Admittedly I didn't RTFM as well as I probably should have either.
The option could be given to make all timezone settings 'server time' which would simplify it. I understand the reasoning behind the way it works. It just feels a little complicated for the average random forum user to figure out. Heck I'm a system administrator myself (EMC SAN) and I didn't figure it out until I asked here. Admittedly I didn't RTFM as well as I probably should have either.