Set Your Blog’s Timezone by City
One of my favorite things about working on WordPress.com is that improvements get made and pushed out as soon as they’re tested and ready. Just a day after I wrote about manually changing your blog’s timezone to account for Daylight Saving Time, Ryan updated WordPress.com so you can now set your timezone by choosing a city.
Here’s how it works.
Log in to your dashboard, click on Settings > General, and scroll to Timezone. You now have the option to pick a city that’s in your current timezone instead of a UTC timezone. For example, I live in the same timezone as Los Angeles, so I’ve selected that city.
Once you’ve set your timezone this way, you won’t need to change it again to account for Daylight Saving Time. WordPress.com will automatically update your blog’s time settings as needed.
If you’re interested, here’s a full list of the timezones we support for reference.
Posted: Tuesday, March 16th, 2010 at 8:47 pm. Filed in HowTo, settings, WordPress.com.
Tags: settings, timezone, WordPress.com
Mar 16th at 8:56 pm
It’s funny that this screen shot shows two Kentucky cities that are in the same time zone.
Mar 16th at 8:56 pm
Well done and thank you.
Mar 16th at 8:58 pm
Yay! That’s awesome; thanks for updating this
Mar 16th at 9:03 pm
Way to go!!
I’ve been bragging about wordpress ever since I moved here from another blogging site a few weeks ago. With good reason. You’ve just added another one.
This is great!
Mar 16th at 9:13 pm
Little things mean a lot. THANKS!
Mar 16th at 9:16 pm
Excellent!
Mar 16th at 9:18 pm
Love WordPress……
Cheers Guys..
Mar 16th at 9:19 pm
Thanks! I hated having to calculate where the timezone was w.r.t. Greenwich. This is fantastic!
Mar 16th at 9:20 pm
Why does Indiana need six different choices and there’s nothing for Arizona, which is its own damn time zone? Useless.
Mar 16th at 9:28 pm
“Phoenix” is available as a city choice, in the America section of the list.
Mar 16th at 9:25 pm
It’s not on mine. Says to click on a city… but I clicked everything possible, no list of cities pops open. Help!
Mar 16th at 9:29 pm
PJ: Please contact support for help troubleshooting: http://en.support.wordpress.com/contact/
Mar 16th at 9:27 pm
I totally love that WordPress.com is constantly getting improved feature by feature and not in big chunks with lots of time in between.
Mar 16th at 9:27 pm
Awesome! do we still have to update manually?
Mar 16th at 9:30 pm
After you pick a city for your timezone, you won’t have to update this setting again to account for Daylight Saving Time.
Mar 16th at 9:30 pm
Now I have to figure out where, exactly, I live.
Great.
Mar 16th at 9:33 pm
Thank you!
Mar 16th at 9:35 pm
Thank you Paul and Ryan! All is well in the world today!
Mar 16th at 9:38 pm
Excellent improvement. Thank you!
Mar 16th at 9:38 pm
Super !
Mar 16th at 9:44 pm
Brilliant! Thank you so much!
I love you guys!
Mar 16th at 9:48 pm
That is just so super!!! Really cool stuff!!!
@pjhornberger:
Just try to scroll up in the list where the UTC-s are listed. The cities are on top.
Mar 16th at 9:58 pm
I don’t know why there is need to set the “time zone”… it seems superfluous to me–what does it matter?
Mar 16th at 10:31 pm
It can make a difference if, for example, you use our scheduled post feature. http://en.support.wordpress.com/posts/schedule-a-post/
Mar 16th at 9:59 pm
wow… that’s insane!
Mar 16th at 10:02 pm
Thank you! Why so few cities for California? Used Los Angeles, saw Monterey but where is San Franciso or Sacramento, both much larger than Monterey? Good job anyway, appreciate it!
Mar 16th at 10:03 pm
mine still shows the old version…not cities??? what’s up? I can’t set it…it say pick a city but when I click on the pull down menu there are no cities!
Mar 16th at 10:16 pm
Did you try scrolling up the list? Cities are available above the UTC timezones.
Mar 16th at 10:15 pm
Awesome update!
Mar 16th at 10:21 pm
Great!
Mar 16th at 10:24 pm
Great info. Thanks ! Worked perfectly.
Mar 16th at 10:25 pm
Great update! Looking forward to have this feature since I’m on WordPress.com, so two years ago. Hey WP team, you’re great!
Mar 16th at 10:34 pm
And *snap* just like that, 10 million+ WordPress.com blogs get an update! You guys rock!
Mar 16th at 10:35 pm
Thanks WordPress. I love that I will no longer have to manually date my posts when I blog straddling that utc time/date thing!
There is no better blog platform than WordPress in my opinion. The consistent improvements simply make it easier for us writers to do what we do.
Andrea
Mar 16th at 10:57 pm
WHEEEEE!! I LOVE WORDPRESS!!!
Ahem.
Thanks so much, WP team!
Mar 16th at 11:21 pm
Excellent…so good to stay up-to-date with the right time zone…brings the world closer. Congrats.
Mar 16th at 11:33 pm
You guys are amazing! I am new to blogging (I started 12/31/09) and it has been an incredible experience. Thank you so much for all you do!
Have a beautiful day!
Kimberley
Mar 16th at 11:53 pm
This is so much easier. I always had a few problems with WordPress because of the UTC timezones. Now that things are better, I’m happy.
Keep up the good work, WordPress!
~Sara
Mar 17th at 12:00 am
Mar 17th at 12:17 am
Always thinkin’! Good job Ryan!
Mar 17th at 12:49 am
There’s no Seattle or Portland.
Mar 17th at 12:56 am
Fantastic!! That’s really helpful! Thanks so much WP!!!
Mar 17th at 12:56 am
time zones according to cities will be good
thanks …..
Mar 17th at 1:05 am
So to represent the whole of New Zealand, you have Auckland?! It’s not even the capital city.
Where’s Christchurch? Dunedin? Wellington?
Mar 17th at 4:06 am
Not every city in the world is listed. You can see all the available timezones here: http://php.net/manual/en/timezones.php
Mar 17th at 1:11 am
I feel sorrow…. it can’ t be used in Kuningan – Indonesia.
Mar 17th at 1:21 am
It’s great that we now don’t have to worry about DST changes in time.
Mar 17th at 1:27 am
And this is why we love WordPress. Every site has problems. You’ll fix ‘em in a day. Keep up the good work.
Mar 17th at 1:29 am
Huzzah! I love it!
Mar 17th at 1:36 am
Timely… I’d only just learned how to update my time zone this week and you lot go and make it all accessible like. Bravo. Love WordPress. Yes.
Mar 17th at 1:39 am
I followed those instructions and it did not work for me.
Mar 17th at 4:02 am
Please contact the support team at: http://en.support.wordpress.com/contact/
Mar 17th at 1:39 am
Simply brilliant
Mar 17th at 1:54 am
It’s about time…
I like being able to select “Manila” instead of “UTC+8″. Thanks!
Mar 17th at 1:58 am
What an improvement over the old, primitive way!
Mar 17th at 2:25 am
Much appreciated, made the change right after reading this. Oh yeah, WordPress is awesome!
Mar 17th at 3:23 am
SAH-WEET!
Mar 17th at 3:37 am
Brilliant! Brilliant! Thank you so much!!!
Mar 17th at 3:54 am
What! No Boston?
Did WordPress not have a WordCamp here a few months ago?
How soon we forget!
Mar 17th at 5:01 am
Thank you very much for this valuable feature upgrade.
Mar 17th at 5:14 am
I just set up my first blog a couple days ago and the UTC+ method was quite confusing – no cities, eastern time etc. No sooner do I think about it and you have made the improvement. Great job! Thanks for getting things done.
Mar 17th at 5:38 am
thank you thank you! about time. this makes coordinating group posts much easier.
Mar 17th at 6:17 am
Theres Antarctica, but not San Diego?!
Mar 17th at 6:55 am
Cool! thank you folks
Mar 17th at 7:14 am
What about a city in a different country? Now that would be an amazing option. I live in osaka, Japan, how about adding that.
Thanks WordPress, you guys are doing a great job, really.
Mar 17th at 7:17 am
Excellent. Thank you.
Mar 17th at 8:34 am
Excellent !
Mar 17th at 9:00 am
Thanks so much wordpress.com!
HAPPY ST. PATRICK’S DAY
It really will be a green Irish St. Patrick’s Day here in Hawaii with the very much needed rain we are finally getting even now as I post this!!
Blessings to all this day of March 17th 2010 !!!!!
Mar 17th at 10:34 am
great! better than ever…thanks!
Mar 17th at 11:20 am
I know this is a very good help for us. I think this is not a new thing. Because, WordPress provided this one long time ago, didn’t it? However I didn’t notice about saving time zone since we live in a tropical country, we do not have such saving time at all.
Mar 17th at 11:23 am
Thanks guys! You even have Timbuktu. Gotta love that, immediately set up.
Mar 17th at 11:35 am
thank you. it’s brilliant
Mar 17th at 11:43 am
Great. Immediately changed to Qatar!
Mar 17th at 12:39 pm
That’s great….You guys rock!
Mar 17th at 12:39 pm
Looks awesome!
Mar 17th at 12:41 pm
This is great! The +/- method was confusing…I actually used to just click one until my correct time showed up!
Mar 17th at 1:44 pm
great! thanks.
Mar 17th at 2:25 pm
Thank you so much for this function…!
Mar 17th at 3:17 pm
That’s cool, thanks for the tip
Mar 17th at 3:43 pm
It was a nice attempt to help make things easier for people to identify which timezone they are in. It isn’t an easy task but I find the listing woefully inadequate and incomplete. I live in the DFW area (Dallas/Fort Worth) which comprises several million people but there was no mention of it or any city in Texas for that matter. The way this was implemented means I have to know that Chicago is in the same time zone as Dallas and select it. If I know this I can probably supply the correct UTC code.
It might have been easier to identify where you are if you picked state name. At least we all recognize which state we live in and it is only fifty entries. I realize that a few states range a long way from east to west may and stretch across more than one time zone (Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas and Alaska) but for those you could have multiple entries. For example, Kentucky could have Louisville and Bowling Green. Big enough places that may be recognized geographically. Then there are states like Indiana that just take a great deal of care.
I will leave the countries representatives to fend for themselves so they don’t need to know that the Netherlands is CET (UTC+1) but in this case a country might do.
Obviously, for the computer this is a nothing more than a table lookup. Setting the time correctly is easy for the computer once the reference is identified. Computers are supposed to make our lives more easy. In this case, we just need a few more references.
Mar 17th at 4:17 pm
We’re pulling from a timezone database that’s maintained by the great folks at the PHP open source project. As far as I can tell, there are four US cities listed for the four continental timezones: Los Angeles for Pacific; Denver for Mountain; Chicago for Central; and New York for Eastern. Additionally, several cities in Indiana because of that state’s unique timezone challenges, plus two in Kentucky, Phoenix, Juneau, and Honolulu. There’s a bit of discussion you can follow along with about substituting timezones like PDT for cities here: http://www.php.net/manual/en/timezones.america.php
Mar 17th at 4:20 pm
Wait, no Canada??
Mar 17th at 4:52 pm
There are several Canadian cities listed as timezone choices, including Toronto, Vancouver and Winnipeg.
Mar 17th at 5:18 pm
Thank you- Great work-
This is my DREAM FOR THE FUTURE : each blog becomes a PERSONAL Radio and/or a TV station, so I could broadcast my programs on my blog.
I believe in Google/Wordpress team AAA +
VINH LUU
Mar 17th at 5:30 pm
Note on the cities listing: Some people are, as always, going to disagree with the cities chosen, or wonder why there are two cities in Kentucky, etc.
These names are not random. They are the official standard names for the various timezones in the Zoneinfo database. The first part of the name is the continental area (which is why Hawaii’s zone is Pacific/Honolulu). The second part of the name is a large city that is central-ish to the time zone, and which is also probably not likely to split into multiple zones any time soon.
The reason for seemingly unnecessary zones is because of historical changes. Those two Kentucky cities, Louisville and Monticello used to have different dates on their Daylight Savings Time implementation. They no longer do, but whenever the law changes things around, a new timezone is formed. These sorts of timezones don’t just describe the time, but also describe when the time changes there. So that’s why the list is so long, and why there may be multiple cities that currently describe your situation.
Future versions of WordPress (org) might have a better method for choosing timezones. We’re working on it (and maybe we’ll have a MAP!) . This new feature of wordpress.com came from there, so it’ll get updated when we come up with a better way. The purpose of this was to eliminate the annoying daylight savings problem, and for that purpose, it works for now.
Mar 17th at 7:08 pm
Otto, thanks for the background – really helpful.
Mar 17th at 5:32 pm
Also, here’s a good site to help you figure out what standardized timezone you live in: http://www.travelmath.com/time-zone/
Mar 17th at 8:35 pm
Wow I find this very useful! thanks
Mar 17th at 9:09 pm
What about Arizona? It doesn’t observe DST. Right now it aligns with Los Angeles, but is usually on Mountain Time.
Mar 17th at 10:16 pm
Select Phoenix from the list of cities.
Mar 17th at 9:14 pm
Good news.
Thank you.
Mar 17th at 11:35 pm
Wow, What Can i say? Bravo! keep it up.
Mar 17th at 11:39 pm
Thanks guys! The selections of time zones by city will be more close to your local time. Well done wordpress!
Mar 18th at 12:33 am
Thanks!
Mar 18th at 12:37 am
I “heart” wordpress.
Mar 18th at 1:51 am
well done…thanks for information
Mar 18th at 6:00 am
great..thanks !
Mar 18th at 7:27 am
Hey there WP guys. Thanks a lot for this, I just finished reading the post about changing the UTC zone for daylight savings then I came across this so I set it for Tasmania & I can now forget about it forever. Awesome & thanks again!!!
Wordpress is the greatest.
P.S. Now all we need is the Random Blog button back in the top right corner & everything will be perfect.
Mar 18th at 7:39 am
finally…things that I’ve been waiting for
Mar 18th at 7:52 am
smile thanks, indeed, nice to upgrade the information.
Mar 18th at 11:27 am
No Chicago? No Dallas, no city in Texas at all. I can’t find a city I know is in my time zone.
Mar 18th at 3:26 pm
Chicago is definitely in the list, let us know if you still can’t find it.
Mar 18th at 11:46 am
Wow, that’s a cool feature….
Mar 18th at 3:03 pm
Thanks very much about timezones but I understand english just little.I lives in Indonesia,so it’s very nice for me if about all of that in translate to Indonesian language.
Mar 18th at 6:45 pm
Definitely an improvement, BUT… you have like 10 places in Antarctica and no Seattle? Not even Portland or San Francisco?
That being said, still an improvement over the previous method.
Mar 18th at 11:31 pm
this rocks but maybe you should refine it by adding a couple of places every week. because i agree with Margaret Hebron. That being said, still an improvement over the previous method. wordpress has how many bloggers and only so many cities are in the new time zone option. i would love to see some of the towns in the north of canada up here on the site!