Last processed file was uploaded on 2015-06-08 11:18:58.
Current server time is 2015-06-08 11:06:54 CST
(Obviously, the uploads/processing are quoted in a different timezone to the current server time, but it sounds funnier saying there's timetravelling involved )
Yes.
On the last server migration where Metalbeast announced "welcome to Florida"
Since Metalbeast is the owner of a mulitiple physical site ISP he has resources in a number of places here in the USA.
The underlying timezone for the servers has floated back and forth in the range of UTC-5 - UTC-8.
The forums and therefore much of warcraftrealms is locked to Rollie's UTC-6 (aka CST) but other parts that get timestamped are whatever is the current computer timezone.
It can make some diagnostics a bit confusing.. such as when that 'KILL...' account got modified and I couldn't locate and verify the changes before the record got wiped.
It can be a real needle in a haystack search, when you don't really know WHEN the change was requested.. and the current (at that time) log file of 20 days was over 2GB of text.
Since the upload time isn't very important for the accuracy of the data (data time is controlled by CensusPlus and the WoW client), I have just given up on some of displayed timestamps.
Aha, makes sense - and yeah, don't blame you for giving up on the minor stuff, sounds awkward to say the least when some things are locked to one zone and others vary wildly! Wonder if it might be possible to force a few more of the varying things to stick with one timezone, or if they just have to take it from the server; that's probably involving rather too much digging around and potentially breaking stuff though
Just noticed the forum still doesn't update for daylight savings time/summer time changes too, been like that for years though, I'm just used to it being wrong for half the year unless I remember to switch it manually
I had a nice long chat with Metalbeast last week... after the top advertisement space went flaky.
The server and operating system it uses are timezone aware and do change time at the correct system DST time.
MySQL which the site and forums use for tracking stuff.. has Timezone tables
But by default the tables are not populated with data, and unlike the Opsys there are no provisions for automatic updates to those data tables when the TZ data is released by IANA.org
I asked Metalbeast to populate the TZ data since I can't make the mostwanted by current hour chart work without the TZ data.
On the other hand I can't yet make that chart work even with TZ data on my development system.
Ahh I see, would be cool if it could automatically do the forum times eventually; nice to understand how these things work a bit more, I'm generally fairly clueless on the techie stuff
Good luck on the most wanted by hour stuff, but don't sweat it too much if you can't get it working, sounds like a level of detail that's a tad ambitious for our current levels of activity anyway - it's only recently that the 0s have been removed from the overall most wanted, we'll never, ever get full coverage for every hour of the day on every realm. That said it'd be very interesting to have available if you can make it work eventually!
)
