Setting Your Time Zone

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Description

How to set your time zone so that all posts and personal messages are displayed in your local time.

Length

5 min 22 secs

Transcript

Introduction

This video is about getting the time setting right so that all your messages and PMs appear with the correct timestamp.

There's been a big change in this version from the previous version.

The whole handling of time and time zones has been completely revised.

If you live in an area that uses daylight time in summer and you set your time zone correctly it should now switch between standard time and daylight time automatically, whereas we had to do that manually in the previous version.

Default Forum Time

So when we first arrive at the forum and we're not logged in, we'll see up here a date and time.

Now that's UTC, Coordinated Universal Time, and that's the default setting for the forum.

And it used to be known as Greenwich Mean Time, sometimes called Zulu Military Time.

UTC is the base time from which all other times around the world are calculated.

And if you're not a member or you're not logged in, you'll always see UTC up here and all the messages and times such as these down here will be displayed in UTC time.

How to Set Your Time Zone

So if you're a member, how do you set your time zone?

Assuming you're logged in, we go up here to the top left-hand corner and single left-click on that down arrow next to our name and that brings up our profile menu.

We go down here to Look & Layout and we single left-click on that and that brings up a page showing up here our preferred time format and our time zone.

We'll do the time zone first.

Default is UTC

So the default there is displayed as the Universal Coordinated Time.

And we'll take three examples, the UK, US and Australia.

We single left-click on the drop-down menu and it comes up in Universal Time and here we see all the time zones and their difference from UTC.

Setting U.K. Time

We'll start with the UK and we'll scroll right down to where the time zone is zero and we see two times listed, Greenwich Mean Time and United Kingdom Time.

Now if we look at United Kingdom Time, we see there's two time zones listed next to the end of that name - BST British Standard Time and GMT. Whereas Greenwich Mean Time has only one time zone listed - GMT.

So if we selected GMT, our time setting would stay locked on GMT all year round and there would be no change in summer.

But if we go up to United Kingdom Time, where we have BST and GMT listed, that should switch between British Summer Time or British Daylight Time in summer and GMT automatically.

And over here on the left it shows the current time difference of one hour.

So that's the United Kingdom.

Setting U.S.A. Time

Now if we are in the USA, we'll scroll down further.

Let's say we're on the East Coast of America.

Again have two choices, Eastern Standard Time or Eastern Time.

And Eastern Time switches between Eastern Daylight Time and Eastern Standard Time, whereas Eastern Standard Time just stays locked on that all year round.

Setting Australian Time Zone

Now let's have a look at Australia. We'll take the East Coast of Australia and we have the same choice.

If we choose Australian Eastern Standard Time, that will stay locked on Australian Eastern Standard Time all year round.

So if you lived in Queensland, that will be the setting to choose.

Australian Eastern Time will switch between Daylight Saving Time in summer and Standard Time in winter.

So if you live in Victoria or New South Wales, then that would be the setting to choose.

Applying these principles to your country

So no matter where you live in the world, look for the two settings that apply to your area.

The Standard Time that stays locked on Standard Time all year round, and choose that one if it is appropriate for you.

Or if there's a Standard Time and a Daylight Time choice, choose that one if you have Daylight Savings Time in summer.

Save Your Setting

Now once you have chosen your time, we just need to save it.

So we scroll down to the bottom of the page here and we click on Change Profile, and that saves it.

Format of Time Displays

The other setting up here, the Time Format, that just determines the format of this display up here.

So it's not as critical as the Time Zone Format, but if you prefer it to look a bit different to the default display, you can choose one of these formats and you can just experiment with those, see what they look like, and either leave it at the forum default or change to your choice.

Conclusion

So that's how we set up time zones and time display format.