This is something that has bugged us for a long time with AF.

Our webserver is in Dallas.. the windows server 2008  timezone is CST (UTC -6.00) - so it's currently 7pm on Tues 17th there. I'm in Canberra Australia, the timezone is UTC + 10, so it's 12pm Wed 18th here. My DNN profile is set to UTC + 10. The timezone setting on AF is set to UTC 00:00. If I post on my forums, the post time says 16 Nov 7pm. So it's showing the time with the server's timezone rather than my local timezone.

So the question is, how do I get AF to show the post times using the user's DNN timezone settings?

thx

Vincent.

There aren't any issues with time zones that we are aware of. In most cases, incorrect dates are caused by configuration issues. Adjust the timezone offset value until you get the result you need. The value is used to help adjust differences between portals and server values.

That's the thing though, my portal and server are both set to the same timezone.. and yet the display is incorrect, it's showing in the portal or server's timezone not the users timezone. If I adjust the offset then it might be correct for me but what about other users in other timezones?

Do you have a step by step guide I can follow to make it work correctly.. based on what I mentioned in my previous post, what have I done wrong?

Well I had another look at the offset setting, but that doesn't cut it. The difference between the server timezone and mine is 16hrs, so it's not possible to use that. In any event, that would just fix it for me but users in other time zones would still be wrong.

Are you actually using the DNN User profile timezone setting? It looks to me like the dates are stored in the database as local server time, the normal practice for web apps is to store dates as utc time and then convert them to the user's timezone when displaying them.

And interestingly I see the same problem on this forum.. the post dates are 16hrs behind.

We have several other customers from Australia. I'll reach out to them and see if they are having the same issue.


Yes.


Yes, we are well aware of this and how the time is being stored. If we could go back 6+ years and change the way we stored the dates we would. However, that really isn't an option so we do depend on a few settings that need to be setup in order to calculate the date properly.

If you change your dnn user profile setting to UTC + 10 on this forum what dates do you see? I have mine set to that but still see the dates as 16hrs behind. Assuming your server/forums are setup correctly surely I should see the correct times.

This is the same issue I have stated in this post:

http://www.activemodules.com/active...n-utc0800/

I have tested this on my production site (in Dallas) and on my development site (Ottawa), two different servers in two different timezones:

Results of SYSDATETIMEOFFSET() SQL command on the Dallas Server - 11/21/2010 1:28:00 PM -06:00
Results of SYSDATETIMEOFFSET() SQL command on Ottawa Server - 11/21/2010 2:31:02 PM -05:00

I have the AF offset set to UTC-1.00 to help get the forum posts to have the correct time for most of the users that exist in the Eastern Time Zone for the Dallas Server (and that configuration is simply restored on the development server)

A test post on the Dallas server from someone who is set for UTC-5 (Eastern), shows a time of 11-21-2010 02:34 PM
The same test post on the Ottawa server for a user who is set for UTC-5 shows a time of 11-21-2010 03:36 PM which is expected behaviour.

When I change that user to be from another timezone (let's use Pacific - UTC-8.00), I would expect that the times of the postings would be 3 hours less as they were posted around 11:30am Pacific Time.  In fact they show:

11-21-2010 02:34 PM for the posting done on the Dallas server and 11-21-2010 03:36 PM for the posting done on the Ottawa server. 

Neither time changed and it should!!!

Thanks Colby, at least I know now it's not something I've configured wrong.

Will, any news on this?

It's gone very quiet here.. will this issue be resolved? This really shouldn't be that hard in .net :

system + offset -> portal time zone -> dnn user profile time zone. What am I missing?

bump?

oh wow.. somethings changed because now the the time for my previous post is just 1hr behind.. which daylight saving accounts for. So did you fix something in the code or something in the config?

I have the 1 hour daylight saving issue too on my forum (I'm in NZ). Any ideas on how to fix it? It only occurred on upgrade to AF 4.3.6

You can change the portal time to make the AF time correct.

Hmm, that would work for the forum, but it would then throw the timestamp on the receipts out for the shop also running on that portal, which is a major issue.

It seems that the v4.3.6 release is a bit broken - I've got three issues now that are unresolved which were working in the previous version (4.1.7)
- module css broken (had to manually rewrite to get 'Red' theme looking the same)
- page numbers redirecting
- daylight saving time not being implemented despite correct portal timezone

I guess at least it fixed the very slow load speeds of large threads issue which was the reason for the upgrade :-}

It would be great if the timestamp was accurate though - it just unsettles users and they comment on it a lot

The other issues should probably be put into a ticket, or a new forum post, but:

1. I am not aware of the css issues, can you post screen shots?
2. Covered in other post
3. Make sure the user's profile time zone is set correctly, and also make sure the database has the correct time but running this in the Host SQL menu: GETUTCDATE()