Time Zones in Moodle

The Moodle site pulls its time from the server’s clock that it’s running on so in this case it would be Pacific Standard Time (PST). Since PST follows daylight savings this would mean that the time would switch over based off this. Moodle does have options to force the time-zone for the entire site or to allow individual users to select which time-zone to use. Usually if the end users are left the option to set his/her time-zone then it’s a Moodle site with users across the globe instead of the majority being from one location. The setting of the time-zones uses UTC time zone settings so for example New York would be UTC -05:00.

More can be found here about UTC: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_zone

An administrator can change the following location settings in Settings > Site administration > Location > Location settings.

• Default timezone
  This sets the default time zone for date display.
• Force default timezone
  Pull down menu to force the user to be in a specific timezone or allow users to individually select their timezone.
• Default country
  Select the country to appear by default on a new user account page form.
• IP address lookup
• GeoIP City data file
  Location of GeoIP City binary data file. This is a non-invasive way to determine geographical and other information about Internet visitors in real-time. This file is not part of Moodle distribution and must be obtained separately from MaxMind. There is a GeoIPLite version for free.
• Google Maps API key
  Google Maps for IP address lookup visualization key. The Google Maps API lets you embed Google Maps with JavaScript. This is free. After updating the information in this section, IP's that are displayed as a link, such as in reports, when clicked will open new window with a Google Map indicating the location of the IP, if found and if not a private address.

After updating the information for the location settings page it is recommended to update the time-zones.

The update time-zones page Settings > Site administration > Location > Update timezones provides administrators with the option to update their local database with new information about world timezones. This is important because of daylight saving changes that many countries use.