Explaining how to change date and time of a post?

[frankiekam]

Hi Y'all

I just manually ported my old Guestbook entries into a SMF board discussion thread. I had to use PhpMyAdmin to manually edit the MySQL timestamp values into the equivalent of the old Guestbook entries - for accuracy sake. This website was invaluable to me in getting accurate timestamp values: www epochconverter dot com

I had to follow these steps:
1. Take note of the human-readable timestamps on the entries of my old Guestbook.
    For example:  2016-03-08 08:10:50

2. Copy the text: 2016-03-08 08:10:50 to the clipboard (Control-C)

3. Paste the text into Notepad (Control-V): 2016-03-08 08:10:50

4. Go to www epochconverter dot com and enter the values from Step #3 into the edit boxes like so:


5. Click on the "Human date to Timestamp" button


6. Copy the value 1457395850 to the clipboard

7. Use PhpMyAdmin and Paste this value into the correct field of the correct table in the MySQL database.

8. Use PhpMyAdmin to save the table data in MySQL.

Hope this helps,
Frankie Kam
Malaysia

[Illori]

yes it is possible to do it that way, but we dont recommend anyone to do it. especially someone that does not know much about how to use phpmyadmin or a database.

[GirlinGray]

I would really like to know if there is a mod or simple way of altering time stamps for posts that doesn't require going into a php admin.

I run a writing workshop and sometimes changed out posts for workshop review end up at the bottom of threads when they need to be the top post.

As another example, if I have a new staff member come in, it would be great if that staff member's bio post could be moved up under mine so staff bio posts are first in a thread.

Being able to alter time/date stamps would really be helpful.

[Arantor]

SMF does not use the time stamp for ordering purposes, it uses the internal post ID which is allocated in creation order.

[GirlinGray]

Okay, I know what that means, though it makes my head spin around in some sort of exorcist frenzy reading it.

That is going to seriously make things complicated trying to re-order a post even if I did want to go into bad places internet to try to do it. It's not topic related at all, it's in a string sequence of posts in all topics related to a creation order?


*Edited to overcome initial head spinning, ow ow ow.

[Illori]

also next time please open a separate topic for your issue. this topic belongs to someone else and their issue is not the same as yours.

[GirlinGray]

Well I try, and this used to be the polite thing to do, to find a topic on what I'm asking about that already exists instead of asking a question in a new topic that asks or addresses the same issue that already exists in multiple previous topics.

Is that not how it is done now? I can open a new topic. I just usually go look to see if there is an existing topic on what I want to ask about. But I can change my ways and just randomly open new topics without looking from hereon out.

[Illori]

we prefer that new topics be opened for each issue, this way we can track if the issue/topic has been solved or not.

[GirlinGray]

I'll do that from hereon in then. Thanks.