Manual:Timezone

The default Timezone (tz) for users who have not specified a custom offset may be configured manually.

Primary Method

 * Create a backup copy of the LocalSettings.php file found in your install directory
 * Edit LocalSettings.php and add the following code:
 * Set the '$wgLocaltimezone' value to the proper value which you can find here. See examples below.

''Note: This timezone will be used in:
 * ~ signatures
 * timestamps in recentchanges
 * timestamps in history''

Note: Upload and deletion logs will probably still be listed in UTC Note: This method has been confirmed to work on MediaWiki: 1.5.6. Note: The $wgLocalTZoffset configuration changed from hours to minutes in MediaWiki: 1.7.0. Note: Adding this code to the LocalSettings.php in version 1.14 breaks the emailing features (E-Mail New Password, Create User by E-Mail) ''Note: Adding this code to the LocalSettings.php conflicts with the RSS Feed dates in Extension:RSS. See the Discussion page of Extension:RSS for more information''

Unconfirmed Methods

 * If you just want to use the local time of your PC, you can just add this line in your LocalSettings.php:


 * To use your local time zone (say NZDT) put this in LocalSettings.php


 * This example may also work great
 * In my case the primary method did not take daylight saving time into account. The next example works for me:

I cannot test daylightsavings right now, so you probably have to combine it with the tip above to make that work.
 * To make it work in 1.5.8 I had to specify the offset in hours, so change all occurences of '/ 60' to '/ 3600', e.g.

Note: The methods in this section are unconfirmed and may not work properly.

Manual Timezone Specification
The primary method needs the server to support the 'tz' database; some non-GNU hosts don't do that. You can supply timezone data manually; see here for details. E.g. use
 * instead of


 * or


 * instead of

Specify The Default User's Timezone Offset
In the PHP safe mode, the ways described above may not work since PHP's putenv function is disabled. Alternatively, you can use $wgDefaultUserOptions variable. For instance, If you live in Asia/Tokyo(UTC+9) and want to do "+09:00" time zone correction, add the following code to LocalSettings.php.

After changing the file, don't forget to purge the cache of articles.