A time zone is an area that observes a uniform standard time for legal, commercial, and social purposes. Time zones tend to follow the boundaries between countries and their subdivisions instead of strictly following longitude because it is convenient for areas in frequent communication to keep the same time.
On your WordPress site, it is important to set the correct timezone to ensure that your website operates according to the appropriate local time. This is particularly important if you schedule posts or events or if you have a global audience in different time zones.
WordPress uses the timezone_string option to get a proper timezone name if available, otherwise falls back to a manual UTC ± offset.
Example return values:
- ‘Europe/Rome’
- ‘America/North_Dakota/New_Salem’
- ‘UTC’
- ‘-06:30’
- ‘+00:00’
- ‘+08:45’
The return is, a PHP timezone name or a ±HH: MM offset. So this was technical knowledge for you. To set the timezone on your WordPress site, you simply need to follow these steps:
- Log in to your WordPress admin dashboard.
- In the left-hand menu, go to “Settings” and click on “General”.
- Scroll down to the “Timezone” section.
- Click on the drop-down menu next to “Timezone” and select your desired timezone from the list.
- Once you have selected the timezone, scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the “Save Changes” button to save your settings.
WordPress will now use the selected timezone for all time-related functions, such as displaying the correct time in published posts, scheduling posts, and other time-dependent features.
All time zones are defined as offsets from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), ranging from UTC−12:00 to UTC+14:00. The offsets are usually a whole number of hours, but a few zones are offset by an additional 30 or 45 minutes, such as in India, South Australia, and Nepal. Some areas of higher latitude use daylight saving time for about half of the year, typically by adding one hour to local time during spring and summer.