When we first built the Fixometer (the engine behind Restarters݀․net), we designed it for our community in London. But as more repair groups around the world sign up, we’ve been working to make sure that this site is as useful as possible to communities everywhere.
As part of this work, we’re delighted to have introduced timezones!
What’s changed?
These are the key things to know:
- Every group now has a time zone. A group’s time zone is the default time zone for its events.
- We display the time zone of events wherever the event time is displayed on the site. Event times are always displayed in the local time of the event.
- If you use our automatic calendar feeds, these have been updated to include time zone information.
Here’s what the new time zones look like (I’ve added the red outlines for clarity):
In the screenshot above, all three events are happening on the same day from 10am local time (in Aotearoa New Zealand, Belgium and the UK respectively).
How to check and change your group’s time zone
If you are a group host, you can check and edit your group’s time zone when you edit your group. If you add a new group, you can set its time zone during the group creation process. If you leave the timezone blank, it will take on the default timezone for whichever network the group is part of.
Your group’s time zone will be used as the time zone for events you create. If you need to create an event in a different time zone, let me know (@james) and we can change that event for you.
What format do we use for time zones?
We are using the industry-standard TZ database of time zones. Each time zone is written as: area/location. The area is usually a continent or ocean. The location is usually a city or island. Sometimes the location will have two parts to avoid ambiguity, such as: country/city.
Some examples:
- Europe/London
- Africa/Porto-Novo
- America/Argentina/Buenos_Aires
Like the underlying TZ database, currently we are only able to support time zone names in English. You can find a full list of time zone names on Wikipedia.
Other questions?
Just ask below 