Keeping track of time on your website is important because it helps you know when users are on your site, and when an event happens. WordPress does a good job within this task. But do you know how to set WordPress timezone? Keep reading this article to know how to configure and customize the date and time settings in the WordPress site.
What is WordPress timezone?
WordPress is a free, open-source website creation platform that allows you to build websites and publish content online easily. WordPress timezone is the date and time that are shown on a WordPress site.
By default, WordPress displays dates on April 30, 2014, and times at 2:42 pm. Additionally, WordPress uses UTC (Coordinated Universal Time, or GMT) to define the time to display.
When starting a WordPress site, the first thing you need to do is to change the local PHP timezone to UTC. Therefore, if your server is already set to US Eastern Time, and PHP is set to the same timezone, WordPress will pass it.
Does It Matter If You Set the Correct Timezone for Your WordPress Site or Not?
It depends on what you are doing on your site. For blogs, the WordPress timezone only affects the published times and revision timestamps of your pages and posts.
If you use the scheduling feature in WordPress, you will need to set your timezone correctly so that the content publishes at the time you expect.
This is also true if you also want to automate some marketing activities. Let’s say you schedule a post to publish at 11 AM Sunday. Then set social schedulers to promote it within the first hour of publication.
In this case, if you set the timezone wrong, the social scheduler will promote unpublished content. As a result, your visitors will see a 404 Error page until the content goes live.
In addition, many WordPress plugins have their own configured timer. If you do not set the timezone right, events on your website will be displayed incorrectly as the timezone the plugins use is different.
For these reasons, you should take a moment to set the WordPress timezone correctly, as indicated below.
Why we should set the WordPress timezone properly?
Setting WordPress timezone is very important because of many reasons. There are 2 main reasons are listed below:
- The first reason is that it directly affects the time you got emails or subscribe from readers. Then, you will not know exactly when and where they are from. So if you want to have any emails that come from the site to show the time, you should set your WordPress timezone correctly.
- The second reason is that many popular WordPress plugins have their own configured timer. If you do not set your WordPress timezone properly, making the timezone different from the timezone of the plugin, the events on your site will not be displayed correctly.
How to set WordPress timezone?
First, open the timezone setting page
From your WordPress dashboard, go to Settings > General
Second, select the timezone
Navigate to the Timezone section, then select the time zone you want WordPress to use to display.
Time zones are grouped by regions such as Africa, America, Asia, Europe, and other smaller regions. So you can select the city nearest to you to fit the timezone most.
WordPress also provides 24 different UTC timezones, so you can manually calculate your time accordingly.
Between the 2 methods above, you should choose an available rather than choosing UTC options to make the timezone more correct.
In case, there are no available cities near you, just go for the UTC accordingly to your region.
Third, Choose the date format
Drop down to the Date Format section, select one of the date formats you wish to display.
There are 5 different ways for you to show date on your WordPress site:
- F j ,Y: Month date, Year
- Y-m-d: Year-month-date
- m/d/Y: Month/date/year
- d/m/Y: Date/month/year
- Custom: this option allows you to define your own custom date format.
In this example, I want to display September 15, 2021, so I will choose the first option F j, Y.
Forth, set the time format
In the Time Format section, you will see a list of predefined time formats, you can select one of them to display time in your WordPress site.
- g: i a: hour: minutes am (hour from 0-11)
- g: i A: hour: minutes Am (hour from 0-11)
- H: i: Hour: munites (hour from 0-23)
- Custom: here, you can define your own custom time format.
Fifth, select the day to start the week.
Move to the Week Starts On section at the page bottom, open the dropdown list, then select the day that begins the week in your region.
Finally, save your settings
The last step is to save all your setting by clicking on the Save Changes button.
Now, you should take a look at your page front end to see how date and time settings are shown on your site.
Does WordPress Take Daylight Saving Time (DST) into Account?
The timezone set in WordPress only considers the change in Daylight Saving Time (DST) when you set it based on location.
If you use UTC, you will need to change the WordPress timezone manually each time the clock changes.
It is almost impossible to list every city worldwide. So chances are, you won’t find the one you’re living in.
However, as long as you know a city with the same timezone as yours, you can set the timezone of your website to that city.
For example, Sweden is a country not on the menu, but Stockholm is. Since Sweden uses only one timezone, selecting Stockholm as the location automatically sets the correct time for your WordPress site. After you select a city, the UTC and local time will be shown to you.
In this example, the universal time is 11:31 AM. And the local time is 12:31 PM. At 3 AM (local time) on March 27, 2022, WordPress will automatically adjust to Daylight Savings Time. So you don’t have to touch anything.
Best WordPress Timezone plugins
With the above tutorial, you can set up the basic timezone including time, day, and date. To do the advanced customization related to time, you should use a WordPress timezone plugin.
In this blog, I will mention the 3 best plugins for you to configure time in your WordPress site.
My Calendar
Rating: 4.7/5 (128 reviews)
Price: $49-$199 (Free version included)
The first plugin on the list is My Calendar that allows you to display events in a variety of ways. Individual event calendars, numerous calendars presented by categories, locations, or author, and simple listings of forthcoming events are all supported by the plug-in within WordPress Multisite.
This WordPress event management plugin offers an easy-to-use interface. My Calendar gives designers and developers that need a unique calendar a lot of options. My Calendar was created with accessibility in mind, ensuring that all of your users have the same level of access to and experience with your calendar.
Timed Content
Rating: 4.6/5 (34 reviews)
Price: Free
Another plugin you may try using is Timed Content that allows you to schedule certain content on a post or page to appear or disappear at specific times. It enables users to specify whether or not a piece of a Page or Post should appear/be visible or disappear/be invisible based on a certain time. You may also set up a timetable to make particular parts of a Post or Page visible at specific hours and dates.
This, however, is not confined to predetermined times and days. You can also have anything appear or fade away after they’ve landed on a page for a particular length of time.
The plugin provides users with 2 types of shortcodes:
- A “client-side” shortcode that allows content to appear or disappear after a specified time interval, with a “fade” effect.
- Two “server-side” shortcodes that allow content to be marked as visible only during specific dates and times.
Easy Timer
Rating: 4.5/5 (16 reviews)
Price: Free
The last but not least option mentioned in the list of best WordPress timezone plugins is Easy Timer. This plugin helps you effortlessly integrate an unlimited number of count down/up timers that refresh every second, as well as the time or date, into articles, pages, and widgets on your website.
Each countdown timer displays the amount of time until the selected date and, if desired, reveals hidden material when that date is reached. Each countdown timer displays the amount of time that has passed from the date you specify or the amount of time that an Internet user has spent on the webpage.
This timer plugin also allows you to automatically schedule an content updates.
Conclusion,
Above is the step-by-step process of setting the WordPress timezone. Hopefully, this article helped you configure and successfully set up date and time in your WordPress site.
If you wish to do more advanced configuration regarding timer, you may use a WordPress timezone plugin. Or if you are running a WordPress eCommerce site, you can install a WordPress countdown plugin to set and schedule deals or promotions .
If you have any further questions, please let us know by leaving a comment below.
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