WordPress doesn’t know Samoa at all actually, per the dropdown I see in 3.3 (SVN), so given that you would have had to pick something nearby or UTC, I don’t see it as being something WP has to adjust for on it’s own. Or rather, if they do, they should add it in as opposed to ‘fix’ anything.
Change it manually for now.
(Also I’m fairly sure that WP gets the ‘name’ cities etc from PHP, so if they don’t add it in, it would be hard to autodetect time changes, but that’s a good question.
ETA: Yep, we grab it from PHP – http://php.net/manual/en/function.timezone-identifiers-list.php so you have to do UTC until your install of PHP adds/fixes it.)
Ah OK I’ll check with PHP.net and see what’s up with their code. Apia is the capital BTW
If it’s the same for the whole country, PHP often uses the country name.
WordPress doesn’t actually know about timezones. It uses the timezone handling built into PHP5. However, this itself uses a system called the Olson database. Sometimes this database is called “tz” or “zoneinfo” or, in the case of PHP, the “timezonedb”. The TimezoneDB contains the list of time zones that gives PHP information about things like Daylight Savings Time and such.
Now, most web hosts don’t update this timezone DB information often. It is built into PHP, but PHP is often not the latest version installed on the webhost. There’s a system known as PECL, or the PHP Extension Community Library, which keeps a big set of known libraries up to date. You can install the PECL system on any PHP install (usually rather easily, it’s built into most package repositories), and then use that to update specific library packages for your PHP installation. PECL is often integrated very tightly with PEAR (the PHP Extension and Application Repository).
One of the libraries PECL maintains is the timezonedb library. If you use the PECL system, then you can install an updated timezonedb on your PHP installation. Here’s the link to their information about it: http://pecl.php.net/package/timezonedb
If the library is up to date, and PHP knows about it, then WordPress will know about it.
On the other hand, this is usually not within the reach of anybody who doesn’t have a dedicated server or a virtual dedicated server, and is able to install their own code on that server. If you use a shared server, for example, then it’s unlikely you have that access, or will be able to convince your web host to update something as obscure as the timezonedb library using PECL. In which case, you’ll just have to do the best you can with what it does know about.
Detailed and accurate answer thanks Otto. You truly are a Tech Ninja
