Customizing ProductCart - Changing date/timezone

Print Page | Close Window

Changing date/timezone

Printed From: ProductCart E-Commerce Solutions
Category: ProductCart
Forum Name: Customizing ProductCart
Forum Description: Exchange messages with other users that are customizing ProductCart.
URL: https://forum.productcart.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=3901
Printed Date: 26-June-2024 at 6:43am
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.04 - http://www.webwizforums.com

Topic: Changing date/timezone

Posted By: lcameron
Subject: Changing date/timezone
Date Posted: 04-August-2010 at 10:01pm

We are hosting ProductCart in the USA, however because we are an Australian based store, the date on orders placed is normally out by a day. Is there anyway to change the timezone so that it is based on Australian time, not the server time?

Thanks

Replies:

Posted By: john
Date Posted: 07-August-2010 at 4:53pm

I would be interested in this one as well. I asked a similar question a year or so ago and did not find a solution. I have no idea if this is a change to product cart or maybe my hosting company is the one to solve this. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

John

Posted By: katharina
Date Posted: 07-August-2010 at 5:24pm

Same issue here. Would love to have a way of adjusting this in the backend.

-------------
Katharina
*******************
www.GermanPlaza.com
*******************

Posted By: Greg Dinger
Date Posted: 07-August-2010 at 8:31pm

I see this as potentially a very large effort. We have developed for a couple clients the ability to issue HTML formatted e-mails from their stores. Our mod covers 90%+ of the e-mails that a store might send. This mod required alteration of almost 50 scripts in the application.

I just popped around a few of those e-mails and note that many have the date in them.

Everyone in this thread has been a bit general in their request, and one can only speculate as to what you are hoping might be the outcome of such a mod. I would invite all of you to be a bit more specific in declaring just where you wouild wish to see the time zone change to take effect.

If you are hoping that each e-mail produced by the system would contain your local date, for example lcameron's Australian date, you are looking at a comparable number of changed (or at least carefully reviewed) scripts - somewhere ranging up to around 50. The problem being that it's not like the order date is set at some central point, and then that date is used for all communications. The application is using the server timestamp when originating a lot of this stuff (example being shippped date) so everywhere a date is being initialized, you need to go and apply an override. This task could grow legs very quickly.

To provide a mechanism for you to change the local setting for your store adds a couple more files to be changed. Were you to hope that each customer could individually set their own local time zone, now you add a few more files.

As you can see, if this were to be done as I am interpreting the request, this is a potentially huge effort. Could you folks be more specific about what you are hoping to see from such a change?

-------------
GreyBeard Design Group

Certified ProductCart Developer

Web Design/Development/Hosting

http://tinyurl.com/5c8t4t" rel="nofollow - Add-Ons & Custom Code |

Posted By: katharina
Date Posted: 07-August-2010 at 9:12pm

All I'm looking for is having the correct date and time for my location, which would be Pacific time, and not Greenwich time. I have seen lots of applications where you can set your zone and it adjusts everything from there. I understand that this takes tons of files to be modified, yet I feel that this should be an intricate part of PC. We truly hate that is doesn't do it, yet we are not willing to spend money on another mod which makes upgrading to future versions a nightmare.

-------------
Katharina
*******************
www.GermanPlaza.com
*******************

Posted By: Greg Dinger
Date Posted: 07-August-2010 at 9:22pm

Hi Katharina - then in your case, my statement stands. You are making a general statement that you want the dates to be generally correct for your time zone. That means that every place in the system that a date is stored in the database, or that it appears in an e-mail, the code needs to be examined and potentially altered. Huge effort.

EI, please correct if you disagree.

-------------
GreyBeard Design Group

Certified ProductCart Developer

Web Design/Development/Hosting

http://tinyurl.com/5c8t4t" rel="nofollow - Add-Ons & Custom Code |

Posted By: katharina
Date Posted: 07-August-2010 at 9:27pm

It needs to be everywhere, not just emails, but also the backend so we can tell exactly when an order came in with our local time zone. It's important for our daily cutoff time for UPS or Postal shipping. That also need to apply to the delivery date you can pick. Perhaps EI can incorporate this in the next big version.

-------------
Katharina
*******************
www.GermanPlaza.com
*******************

Posted By: lcameron
Date Posted: 07-August-2010 at 9:27pm

Thanks for the info Greg.

For our store, the main issue is the date recorded when when an order is placed is incorrect. We are an Australian based store, yet because the server is US based, depending what time of day the order is placed the date ordered can show as the previous day. Eg. last week, an order was placed on the Friday but that date shown is the Thursday.

This has been causing confusion for some admin staff with reporting and also processing orders.

If it's not something I can fix myself, I would hope, like Katharina, that this might become part of an upgrade as I know my customers also won't want to pay for another modification.

Posted By: Greg Dinger
Date Posted: 07-August-2010 at 9:39pm

I can only see this as being practical to do if EI can be convinced (through user demand) to place this on a high priority list of enhancements. Trying to do this as a mod, then carrying it forward from release to release, would be a lot of work.

-------------
GreyBeard Design Group

Certified ProductCart Developer

Web Design/Development/Hosting

http://tinyurl.com/5c8t4t" rel="nofollow - Add-Ons & Custom Code |

Posted By: Greg Dinger
Date Posted: 07-August-2010 at 9:40pm

Kaatharina - I understand. That was my point exactly. It has to be system-wide, or it is not useful - and thus the rub. Having done this HTML e-mail mod, and worked in as much of the cart as we have, I know just how to do this, and the effort would be significant.

-------------
GreyBeard Design Group

Certified ProductCart Developer

Web Design/Development/Hosting

http://tinyurl.com/5c8t4t" rel="nofollow - Add-Ons & Custom Code |

Posted By: ProductCart
Date Posted: 07-August-2010 at 9:56pm

We understand the issue and it has indeed been on our radar for a while. This is a technically simple, but very substantial project. It affects many, many areas of the application.

-------------
The ProductCart Team

Home of ProductCart http://www.productcart.com" rel="nofollow - shopping cart software

Posted By: Greg Dinger
Date Posted: 07-August-2010 at 10:05pm

Couldn't agree more. In terms of how to do it, not so big a deal. It's just that it would be EVERYWHERE you look that a change would be needed.

-------------
GreyBeard Design Group

Certified ProductCart Developer

Web Design/Development/Hosting

http://tinyurl.com/5c8t4t" rel="nofollow - Add-Ons & Custom Code |

Posted By: john
Date Posted: 07-August-2010 at 11:10pm

You may be looking at this to closley. The customer only will see a couple of dates. ie saved order date and time and the date on order confirmation. Maybe these could be the areas that get the off date and time off set.

I have done a small change to the batch ship screen where I found the ship date and added 1 day.

My date is only correct at 8pm at night and It does cause confusion to the customer.

John

Posted By: RobertZ
Date Posted: 08-August-2010 at 1:31am

lcameron wrote:

We are hosting ProductCart in the USA, however because we are an Australian based store, the date on orders placed is normally out by a day. Is there anyway to change the timezone so that it is based on Australian time, not the server time?

Thanks

Hi
Suggestion, move to an Aussie based host. Your customers will be rewarded with faster pings and load times. :)

You'll end up one day having an Aussie host, so might as well bite the bullet and do the move. You wont regret it.

As for suggestions on hosts, we use Netlogistics. Great service and good prices. We have a VPS server but the shared servers are also good. Only issue is if U use MSSQL their shared SQL is a little show with too many DB on there as there included in plans.

Posted By: lcameron
Date Posted: 08-August-2010 at 1:36am

Thanks RobertZ, but moving hosts is not an option for any of my customers running ProductCart at the moment. Some have been using US based hosting for ProductCart for 5 years now with no issues, only when we have tried Aussie hosting have we ended up with a number of issues, so for now that is not an option to fix the problem.