Publication date/time in the News XML Sitemap

In the News XML sitemap, we use the GMT date and time for your publication. This might cause confusion sometimes, but it is exactly according to the specification. In the section, the W3C site is linked, where it says:

“Times are expressed in UTC (Coordinated Universal Time), with a special UTC designator (“Z”).”

UTC is the same time zone as GMT, but is referred to by a different name. You can use one of the many time zone converters available online. This will help to determine if the time adjustment was made correctly by WordPress.

There is another option of adding the date/time with a time zone designator. However, we’ve found that this is much more prone to error. Since WordPress already saves the GMT date/time in the database, it’s actually also a lot easier from a development perspective.

If the GMT time is incorrect, it is most likely due to an incorrect local time setting on your server. Please contact your web host for assistance fixing the local server time.

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