With daylight saving time (DST) coming up this Sunday, I've noticed a couple things that were off with the forum time and want to fix them for you all. The forum doesn't automatically update for DST changes as we have to go to our profiles to make the adjustments every time. Also, guests see the forum time as EDT all the time, and the daily stats you see close any day an hour early when we're in EST. While I've been learning all the admin settings recently, I discovered two time settings that weren't set correctly. After testing with Martin, we realized that I needed to tweak them.
If you go to your own profile, select Modify Profile -> Look and Layout, and then look for Time Offset, you'll see that the forum time listed right below it has been running on EDT the entire time. While all of you have your own time offset so that you can get it in the correct time zone, there's also a global time offset that affects everyone, and it's been set at +1 all along. That means the forum time is 1 hour ahead of the server's time zone, which was incorrectly set to be EST all the time and not allow DST changes. That's why everyone in EST has had to set their profile time offset to -1 to counter the +1 of the forum's offset. Members in CST are currently at -2, MST at -3, and PST at -4 as they're all the respective hours behind the forum time in EDT. When we actually were in EDT, all the settings were at 0 (EDT), -1 (CDT), -2 (MDT), and -3 (PDT) as the forum time did match up correctly.
At 6 PM EST today, I'll remove the global +1 time offset and tweak the time settings so that the forum automatically updates itself for DST changes from this point forward. You'll see the times go back one hour when I remove that one hour offset, so you'll need to go to your profiles, select Modify Profile -> Look and Layout, and hit the "auto detect" link beside Time Offset. Everyone in Eastern time (EST or EDT) will need to have their profile's time offset at 0 to match up with the server time. Those in Central time will be at -1, Mountain time at -2, and Pacific time at -3. Once completed, you won't need to make any more time offset changes in the future unless you move out of your time zone or live in an area that doesn't observe DST.
If you have any questions, please post them here. I'll be happy to address any concerns as we get ready to spring forward.
