WordPress and Daylight Saving Time
Cidu Bill on Mar 15th 2010
For some reason, WordPress never figures out that Daylight Saving Time has begun until a few weeks after the fact, meaning each day’s new post will show up an hour late (unless I remember to manually change each one after 12:02am).
Filed in Bill Bickel, CIDU, Daylight Saving Time, WordPress, comic strips, comics | 25 responses so far
Cidu Bill Mar 15th 2010 at 12:13 am 1
And in case anybody’s wondering, this has nothing to do with WordPress still being set to begin DST when it used to begin — the amount weeks it takes WordPress to catch up to reality varies from year to year — and setting “Official CIDU Time” ahead by an hour isn’t a fix because posts go live according to the time zone I was set at when I put them into the queue.
furrykef Mar 15th 2010 at 01:48 am 2
It’s probably not a problem with WordPress, but rather the web server that WordPress is running on. Why your server is having that problem, I have no idea.
Cidu Bill Mar 15th 2010 at 01:53 am 3
From my end, it’s irrelevant who owns the problem: all that’s important is that it happens every year and there’s nothing I can do to make it not happen.
Jeff S. Mar 15th 2010 at 04:28 am 4
This year’s DST was especially hard on me. I was driving east through Tennessee from Saturday to Sunday. Not only did I have a one hour loss for DST, I lost another hour due to the time zone change from Central to Eastern. Ugh…
Lord-z Mar 15th 2010 at 04:36 am 5
In europe, Daylights Saving Time only begins the last Sunday in March, two weeks after the american. Wordpress might be observing that.
chuckers Mar 15th 2010 at 05:39 am 6
I agree with furreykef that this is likely a problem on the server in question. About 4-5 years ago, W. signed a new law that changed the date of the DST switch for the US. This meant a whole bunch of servers needed to be patched and I am willing to bet a whole lot DIDN’T get patched.
Not really a Y2K sort of problem but you should be able to goad your host provider into at least verifying that they have the latest patch set, especially the DST one. At the very least, I would be concerned about a lack of security patches. Apply the patch (if it is indeed the cause) will require a reboot which will mean some down time and might cause a bit of consternation if you aren’t the only one on the server.
At least you have DST. Where I live doesn’t. In a couple of months, I can “look forward” to daylight streaming in my window at 4 AM. GACK!
Cidu Bill Mar 15th 2010 at 05:51 am 7
Yeah, but this happens every year and the problem continues for a different length of time each year. It does not “correct itself” on the date DST used to begin.
chuckers Mar 15th 2010 at 06:01 am 8
Does this help?
http://www.ryanjparker.net/did-you-remember-to-update-your-wordpress-time-zone-offset-for-dst/
Cidu Bill Mar 15th 2010 at 06:10 am 9
Chuckers, that’s exactly what I did do: but it doesn’t affect posts that were already in the queue before I made the change.
One year, I just re-saved all the posts already in the queue (though this involves re-saving each one twice: if you want to keep the original time, you have to change the time of the post, save it, then change the time back and save it again), but I’ve got a lot of queued posts and that just takes a lot of time.
chuckers Mar 15th 2010 at 06:16 am 10
Ah, now I sort of see why it is “broken” Queued messages would likely do that.
Maybe you just need to shorten your queue a few weeks before DST changes. I am sure there is also some simply SQL statement that could go in and change them all for you. But that involves knowing a lot of the nitty-gritty of the DB being used which is a bit beyond me coming into it cold. Sorry.
CIDU Bill Mar 15th 2010 at 06:32 am 11
You lost me at SQL.
Nicole Mar 15th 2010 at 08:10 am 12
SQL is a computer language that is used to access the database where your data is stored. I know because I code in it
But I am not a GEEK …. understand NOT A GEEK
but it does explain my obsession with ARLOs
mitch4 Mar 15th 2010 at 09:07 am 13
Nicole — the test is whether you are one of those who insist on pronouncing it like the word “sequel”.
Nicole Mar 15th 2010 at 09:19 am 14
nope — I am an S Q L kinda girl
mitch4 Mar 15th 2010 at 09:37 am 15
Awright! That’s my ess cue ell too!
John Small Berries Mar 15th 2010 at 02:39 pm 16
SQL was originally SEQUEL (Structured English QUEry Language), and pronounced as the English word, but was changed to SQL due to a trademark dispute.
Nowadays it depends on the individual product. The documentation for SQL and MySQL officially define the pronunciation as individual letters (the documentation for MySQL states, “The official way to pronounce ‘MySQL’ is ‘My Ess Que Ell’ (not ‘my sequel’), but we do not mind if you pronounce it as ‘my sequel’ or in some other localized way.) NoSQL’s author prefers the pronunciation “no sequel”. MS SQL was marketed with the pronunciation “em ess sequel”.
I have also heard it pronounced as “skwull”, but that was by someone who had never encountered the term before.
CIDU Bill Mar 15th 2010 at 02:42 pm 17
John, I’ve only heard that last pronunciation in conjuction with the MUUS program.
James Schend Mar 15th 2010 at 04:04 pm 18
We used to call it “Squirrel.” It has all the letters in the right order, but it’s more entertaining to say.
While we’re on a meta-post, do you think it would be possible to set your Categories list on the left-hand margin to a pull-down list (or select box, or whatever Wordpress calls it) instead of just listing them all on the page? Right now, the page is so tall that I keep hitting “End” to get to the comments and end up a few thousand pixels below the content. Thanks.
Cidu Bill Mar 15th 2010 at 04:12 pm 19
James, the problem is that the pull-down box is wider than the plain list, and therefore can eat into the comic alongside it.
With WordPress templates, I’ve found, everything’s a trade-off: you try to fix one little problem and end up with two others.
James Schend Mar 15th 2010 at 05:58 pm 20
Well, you can attach a max horizontal size to the pull-down box in your CSS file, or possibly the WordPress template. Just mark me down in the “page is too tall” list, I guess.
Thanks.
Cidu Bill Mar 15th 2010 at 06:04 pm 21
I messed with the CSS file once. Didn’t end well.
I know the page is too tall — but I’ve become a strong believer in “first, do no harm.”
mkilby Mar 16th 2010 at 01:17 am 22
How about simply changing from double spacing to single spacing the list? That would halve the length.
Cidu Bill Mar 16th 2010 at 01:26 am 23
If I could I would. We’re not talking about a boatload of customization options here.
The thing is, there are very, very few templates that allow enough width for a four-panel comic, and obviously that has to be first priority. I have tried alternate templates that allow me to, say, reduce the length of the categories list — but without exception, they brought with them other problems and people got angry. One template made the site unreadable for anybody using Firefox.
The template I’m using now has quirks almost everybody can live with. If anybody knows of the perfect template, I’m listening.
Beckanva Mar 25th 2010 at 11:09 am 24
I know I’m adding this late, but could you put an anchor tag just before “Leave a Reply” and link to it at the top of the page? That way people could click that link if they want to quickly get to the end of the comments. I have almost no experience w/ WordPress & its various templates, so I don’t know what they will and won’t let you do.
CIDU Bill Mar 25th 2010 at 11:21 am 25
Beckanva, as a general rule, WordPress templates don’t allow much in the way ofptions — and of course my overriding priority has to be a template that allows a wide comic strip to be visible. There are ways to tweak a temnplate, but that never ends well — especially for me.