Timestamp Problem July 19, 2011

Timestamp Problem

By Hemant Mehta
July 19, 2011

It’s not as big of a deal in the summer, but during the school year, I rely on timestamps for this site. In other words, I can schedule posts to go up at, say, 11:00a and 3:00p ahead of time, for when I’m at work. For whatever reason, even though WordPress lets me schedule future times for postings to go up, it often just “misses” the time and the post never goes up.

Since the move to Patheos, we’ve tried installing plugins to fix the problem, but to no avail. I can schedule posts a few hours apart, but they all go up immediately at some random time. I asked Patheos what the problem seems to be and they said:

The issue appears to be that the Missed Schedule plugins (we’ve tried two) are misreading the time — their internal clock is not jiving with the broader WordPress internal clock. So Missed Schedule sees a post scheduled to be published in the future, thinks it should have gone out already, and pushes it out immediately.

For those of you who use WordPress or think you know what the problem might be, please let me know! I’d love to fix this ASAP.

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  • Renshia

    Off the cuff, The first thing I would look at is that all clocks are synchronized to the same time, in the same time zone.

  • Mike Young

    I’d echo Renshia: I use WordPress and have scheduled posts well in advance of when they were supposed to go live (weeks, in some cases). Early on, it would go live to soon or somewhat randomly and I realized it was because the time zone was off relative to the server. Found the necessary settings in WP and its worked fine since, with no plugin necessary.

  • Another thing to verify is that the DB clock and the clock for the server hosting the web site are in sync.

    On a similar note – has anybody else been seeing the comment threads being in a weird order (at first, I though maybe it was most recent comments first, but then I noted that the “posting times” of “x hour(s) ago” appeared to be almost “random”)…?

  • JB

    My WordPress is hosted in Texas and although I have tried to set it to Eastern time, it often gets confused and uses the server time.  If your hosting hardware is on Eastern time, and you are trying to use Central time, then perhaps you have a similar problem. 
    In my case, the Texas time can catch up (my event will be late) but in your case, it could be that WordPress will think that the time has already passed.

  • JB

    Yes, I have noticed that our previously orderly comments do seem jumbled, lately.  It was preferable to see the oldest first so that follow-on comments made more sense.

  • JB

    Anyone else tried to make a Disqus account and been told that email/username already exists, but when you try to log in, it just sits there trying and never does login?

  • JeeBar

    I’ve had nothing but great experience and success with a post scheduling plugin called “Revisionary.” Sounds like your issue might be deeper than that, but worth a shot maybe if it’s not one of the ones you’ve already tried.

  • Anonymous

    ARG!  I am PISSED OFF!  I tried to find your site from the patheos main page.

    As far as I can tell, all the OTHER blogs, are accessible through something called “Religion Portals.”

    I can’t find any other place where blogs are organized, and the fact that they are ALL prefaced as “religion” was irritating enough, but I figured, I’ll just press on.

    The categories under that?

    Buddhist,
    Catholic
    Evangelical,
    Hindu,
    Jewish,
    Mormon,
    Muslim,
    Pagan,
    Progressive Christian

    I’m now pissed that not only four different kinds of Christian are considered deserving of separate breakout and featured as classifications on the level of, say, the entire Jewish or Muslim religion.

    But FAR MORE PISSED am I that I cannot find a category under which you make sense!

    The only way one can find your blog from the main page is their notification for “rolling out the red carpet for a new atheist  blogger” or whatever the hell.

    Surely doesn’t LOOK like a red carpet.  And as soon as that notification is gone, nobody will be able to find you without a search it seems.

    When Fred Clark moved here, many of his commenters thought Patheos unwelcoming because of similar issues, when I read your announcement, I had hoped they had made a CONCERTED effort to change these things and actually be welcoming to atheists and nonchristians.

    But it seems that is not to be.

  • It will be. The atheism portal isn’t ready yet. In the meantime, just come here directly. 

    Problem solved.

  • Anonymous

    AWESOME!  I’m glad it’s being fixed.  Sorry for being pissed off and pissing in your comment threads 🙁

     (I HAVE been coming here directly, just wanted to check out your new neighbors and wasn’t impressed lol)

  • cipher

    This is what comes of being “unequally yoked” with evangelicals – the universe is out of balance.

    You’ve fucked up the time space continuum. Koyaanisqatsi, and all that.

  • While we’re all bitching about the move to the religious-run site and servers (Can I still say bitching, or have they started censoring your comments?) can I just say that the site is so much uglier than FriendlyAtheist.com was?

    Oh… and for whatever reason religious people never know how to run websites.  I had to do so much futile IT work for churches when I was younger, and it was always nightmarish!

  • Also, the “Progressive” Christian portal has the description: “Christian groups that include Methodist, Lutheran, Anglican, Congregationalist, Presbyterian, and Baptist”

    Since when are Baptists progressive???
    And where are you in the portals?  I can’t find you anywhere!  You’re being buried here, Hemant.  I don’t like this at all.

  • Speaking of problems, “Recent Comments” is not working properly. They show up in the sidebar, but when you click on the link, it doesn’t take you to the actual comment. I’ve tried on several different computers with the same result. Help?

  • cipher

    I should add that the page often displays without formatting when I first come to it. I have to refresh to fix it.

    The FSM is displeased, Hemant.

  • cipher
  • cipher

    Here’s another one, dealing with that Mark Driscoll business you posted about last week:

    http://www.patheos.com/blogs/thepangeablog/2011/07/11/dear-mars-hill-church-mark-driscoll/

    Forty-eight comments so far, and virtually all of them expressing admiration and affection for Driscoll. They don’t mind that the man is absolutely obsessed with eternal damnation; they just wish he’d be a little more circumspect in the way he approaches them girlie-men.

    This place is a fundie rat-hole, Hemant.