[wp-hackers] Timezones, server settings, and WP dates

[Ryan Boren]

A full zoneinfo db is about five times the size of WordPress.  That's
not information we want to keep in WP, and anything less doesn't work
for many people.  You can make use of zoneinfo data installed on the
server with setlocale(), strftime(), and TZ, but the support for it is
pretty hit and miss, even across Unix flavors that sport glibc.  Also,
TZ and DST info requires regular updates to keep up with the capricious
whims of the world's governments as DST rules are changed for political
reasons.  Even if you have a full and up-to-date zoneinfo setup, there
are still problems changing over if the server is in a different
timezone than you since two different DST changes must be choreographed.
'Tis especially fun when the hardware clock is not set to UTC.

I ignore DST on my blog.  In fact, I usually just use UTC since it makes
determining relative times much easier.  But, I'm a grumpy network
engineer who does everything in UTC with stratum one traceable bits
timing sources.

Ryan