How do I set the default timezone in php.ini file?

[Volitics]

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Question. How can I set my php.ini file so that the Eastern Time Zone is the default time zone?

I have a GoDaddy shared hosting. The PHP currently is set with America/Phoenix as the default time zone.

It is running the following PHP version:
PHP Version 5.2.17

GoDaddy's technical support says that I can change the default time zone by adjusting the php.ini. But they said something like I would have to do it myself because changing the php.ini directives was outside of their technical obligations.

Here is what the PHP Manual says:
http://sg.php.net/manual/en/datetime....date.timezone

I have done like the PHP Manual says. I have put the following:

date.timezone = "America/New_York"

in the php.ini file but it won't work.

Here is the entire php.ini file that is in the root folder for the hosting:

register_globals = off
allow_url_fopen = off

expose_php = Off
max_input_time = 60
variables_order = "EGPCS"
extension_dir = ./
upload_tmp_dir = /tmp
precision = 12
SMTP = relay-hosting.secureserver.net
url_rewriter.tags = "a=href,area=href,frame=src,input=src,form=,fieldset="

[Zend]
zend_extension=/usr/local/zo/ZendExtensionManager.so
zend_extension=/usr/local/zo/4_3/ZendOptimizer.so 

I would appreciate any assistance.

Thanks.

[cpradio]

Don't forget that you must restart apache once the php.ini has been updated for the settings to take effect. Otherwise, you can use date_default_timezone_set() in your PHP code

[Volitics]

cpradio;

Thank you for responding to my question. I can't reboot the server with a shared hosting.

The date_default_timezone_set() function works okay. I just discovered that function recently. Before now I did not realize that there was a function like that.

I was using something like gmdate("Y", time()+($LocalTimeOffset*3600)) in order to get the proper time zone. The date_default_timezone_set() function makes it a lot easier.

Thanks again.