GMT vs BST on order confirmation times

[nik-ret]

Hi all

We've recently noticed the time is wrong by one hour on the customer order confirmations our site is sending out. I've looked on the community and in the AUG and it seems to point to actinic using GMT. It goes on to explain how to change the script for GMT + or - x-seconds.

Is this the case? If so is there any solution other than changing the script twice a year to account for BST time changes? Is there any way of automating this?

All suggestions gratefully received

Nik

[wjcampbe]

You *could* ask your host to change the time settings on their server, but would probably get a short answer.

[leehack]

'no' or 'fo' would be my best guess at the answer.

[completerookie]

the USA changed their clocks early this year and some of the time-server clocks around the world showed the wrong time for about two weeks.

some of my PC's correctly identified that BST hadn't started yet and carried on correctly, others ignored BST and changed their clocks - those that were wrong, I never could find out why but I ended up turning off the "synch with invalid time server" for a couple of weeks.
I never did get to the bottom of it totally.

My guess is that its down to the time-servers, some were right, some were wrong. If you could identify that they were linking to invalid ones, then you might ask (with good reason) that they link to a known correct one.

[nik-ret]

I checked yesterday with our ISP and they claim the time is corect on their servers. Page 65 of the AUG suggests that the time used for the customer email is GMT.

Is this the case? Are you guys having the same problem or should it be getting the time from my ISPs server?

Thanks again

Nik

[Toby B]

Hi Nik,

Actinic should record the time the server has given it. The patch from the AUG is if you want to set your store to have another country time zone. e.g. GMT -10 (Hawaii).

You can check the server time yourself by uploading a file by FTP and checking the time stamp.

Is that the correct time?

[jxm28788]

I'm getting the same problem. my host says the server times are correct.

Just tried you FTP experiment and the timestamp is -1hour (eg. 09:13, while it's 10:13 on my PC, and my watch)

So does that mean the server is wrong?

[Mike Hughes]

No, the server time is correct. Servers use a fixed time base (UTC otherwise known as GMT) as a reference.

We're now in British Summer Time which is GMT+1.

It shouldn't be beyond actinic to correct the time automatically on all customer communications. Probably something for the wishlist.

Mike

[Bruce]

I have added this to the wish-list for you once again.

Kind regards,