Is setting the time zone supposed to change the time recorded on the site

Plone Support
1

I am having trouble with the timezone setup.

  1. under personal preferences, when I select a timezone and press save, it reverts to "none selected.
  2. I set the time zone in site setup and I expect that would define the date/time used for items such as editing, when items are created, etc.. However, it doesn't. I set for my local zone and the times used are those set by my host.
    Am I misunderstanding what this is supposed to do?

my host has these instructions for setting timezone (never got it to work). in buildout:

  • Under environment-vars =, add a line containing TZ Region/City_Name,

  • where Region/City_Name is a time zone name from from the IANA Time Zone Database.

  • For example,

  • the United States Eastern time zone name is America/New_York

  • and the Indian Standard Time name is Asia/Kolkata.Save and close the file.

I realize if you have users in multiple time zones, there is no way to have the date/time tied to the timezone of each user. so what is the purpose of the timezone setting?

thanks

2

Answer: Display the date/time in the users timezone.

It is not that important in which timezone a date is saved, but its important that it has a timezone attached (normalized to from user to UTC or the timezone user used on input).

It is displayed either in the default timezone from controlpanel or in the users timezone.
So timezone conversion is usally no problem with semantic rich timezones from pytz.

@thet may you want to refine my answer?

If there are issues left please file them at https://github.com/plone/Products.CMFPlone/issues

3

issue confirmed and bug report entered