How to refresh page on specific day at specific time in specific time zone?

Question

I am developing a website that has two back to back web broadcasts. I have used PHP to display the time that the buttons should be enabled and disabled. Now I need to use Ja

Answer 1

I had the same problem as you. I'm building a site that sounds a lot like yours, also using PHP to enable and disable page elements before and after the broadcast time. Your solution seemed promising, but ultimately I was dissatisfied using pure Javascript for the page reload. Javascript gets its time from the client's machine, whereas PHP gets it from the server, and even a small difference between the two could wreck the whole system. (i.e. the page could refresh 30 seconds before the PHP enabled the buttons, causing some viewers to assume the whole thing is down.)

I solved the problem by using PHP to tell the Javascript function what time it is, and it works like a charm. The only issue is that it runs every day, instead of just on one day of the week, but that doesn't bother me- users will have no reason to be viewing the page other than the broadcast day.

This is all you need- I put this right after the tag: