I don’t know about you, but ever since the 2007 change in daylight savings time, my installation of Windows XP has had a difficult time (so to speak) maintaining consistently accurate time. Ever since the change, Windows XP has been randomly resetting its clock (as indicated via the Taskbar) to display time incorrectly. Specifically, WinXP will automatically (i.e., without user intervention) set the time to be one hour earlier than the actual time. For example, if the time is actually 3:00pm, Windows will suddenly display the time as 2:00pm. This has caught me off-guard on several occasions now, as I would work with an incorrect assumption concerning the time, only to find myself running an hour late to an appointment. Clearly, something needs to be done..

The first thing that comes to mind is to switch operating systems. For reasons that extend far beyond wonky time-keeping, I have been wanting to switch to open-source for years. If you have the luxury, time, and resources to accommodate such a switch, then perhaps Linux or Mac will serve you better with much more than the keeping of accurate time.

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This post exists entirely for the sake of tweaking time functionality in Apache, PHP, SQL, and WordPress..

Immediate findings:

• Date/time limit into the past for WordPress: December 13, 1901 @ 15:45
• WordPress will display December 13, 1901 @ 15:45 properly for all functions except wp_get_archives
• All dates prior to 12/13/1901 in MySQL will display as December 31, 1969 @ 19:00 in the WP Admin > Post Timestamp panel
• SQL timestamps of 0000-00-00 00:00:00 display as 0 via $wpdb->get_col("SELECT DISTINCT YEAR
• SQL timestamps of 0000-00-00 00:00:00 display link as the current year when permalinks are enabled
• An SQL timestamp of 1000-00-00 00:00:00 displays link as "1000" and links to the post
• An SQL timestamp of 1000-00-00 00:00:00 displays correctly in archive view, but incorrectly in Admin and post view
• An SQL timestamp of 1950-00-00 00:00:00 displays as November 30, 1949 @ 00:00 in WP Admin Post Timestamp panel and elsewhere in WordPress
• An SQL timestamp of 1950-01-01 01:01:01 displays properly in WP Admin, and elsewhere
• 0001-01-01 01:01:01 displays as January 01, 2001 @ 01:01 in Admin, links to "1" in archives (404 error)
• 1000-01-01 01:01:01 displays correctly in archive, as December 31, 1969 @ 15:59 in Admin and post view
• 3000-01-01 01:01:01 displays correctly in archive, as December 31, 1969 @ 15:59 in Admin, and 404 as post view
• 2050-01-01 01:01:01 displays correctly in archive, as December 31, 1969 @ 15:59 in Admin, and 404 as post view
• January 19, 2038 3:14:08 AM GMT is the latest date that will appear correctly in the WP Admin
• No posts with future date will appear in post view
• An SQL timestamp of 1900-01-01 01:01:01 displays correctly in daily, monthly, and yearly archive views
• An SQL timestamp of 1900-01-01 01:01:01 now displays January 18, 2038 @ 19:14 in Admin
• My head hurts..

More to come.. (much, much later..)

There are currently three formats for expressing date/time in Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). All examples represent the date, "July 04, 2050". The time for all three formats is expressed as "hour:minutes:seconds".

Here is the preferred, standard format¹ for the Internet. This format is defined by RFC 1123 (updated from RFC 822):

# RFC 1123 Standard GMT Format
Mon, 04 Jul 2050 07:07:07 GMT

The programming language C uses the ANSI standard format¹ in its asctime():

# ANSI Standard GMT Format
Mon Jul 4 07:07:07 2050

The RFC 850 format² is now obsolete (RFC 1036) and should not be used:

# RFC 850 Standard GMT Format [obsolete]
Monday, 04-Jul-50 07:07:07 GMT

¹ Weekday abbreviations: Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat, Sun
Month abbreviations: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec

² Weekday abbreviations: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday
Month abbreviations: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December

References

• Greenwich Mean Time Website
• Official US Time
• Time Zones