Tips and Tricks - Blogger Time Zone Setting and Scheduling a Blog Post

One of the problems we encountered during the 2nd Unofficial Crop Chocolate Blog Hop was scheduling blog posts. The time on your computer does not play a roll, you have to set your time zone in Blogger.

Set your Time Zone

1. go to the home page of your blog, log on if you are not already
2. look in the upper right corner for Design and click on it
3. on the left side near the bottom click on Settings
4. then click on Language and Formatting
5. under Time Zone choose your time zone
6. when you have selected your time zone, look in the upper right corner and choose Save Settings

Schedule a Blog Post

1. while in the window to write your post look for and click on Schedule on the right
2. choose Set data and time
3. click in the time box, you'll have the opportunity to use a slider to choose a time or you can type the time just be sure there is a space between the number and AM or PM
4. click Done; the time you selected with show under Schedule
5. when you are happy with your post, choose Publish
6. on the next screen you will see all of your blog posts, past and future; you will see that the post you just wrote says "scheduled"

Time Zone Confusion

 During the blog hop some people where not sure what time to schedule their blog post if they were asked to schedule their post to go live at 12:01 AM Mountain time. If I ever organize (or co-organize) a blog hop again, I think I will just ask everyone to post at 12:01 AM their time. If you are ever asked this again,

• 2 AM EST = 1 AM CST = 12 AM MST = 11 PM PST
• I found a time zone converter that you can try
• some locations do not switch to daylight saving time so watch for that

I hope this helps you with setting the time and scheduling posts on your blog.

Edited to add
While in my office today I noticed a "cheat sheet" I created for myself when scheduling meetings with folks across the United States. I thought you might find it helpful too.

Time Zone "Cheat Sheet"

Eastern	Central	Mountain	Pacific
8 AM	7 AM	6 AM	5 AM
9 AM	8 AM	7 AM	6 AM
10 AM	9 AM	8 AM	7 AM
11 AM	10 AM	9 AM	8 AM
12 PM	11 AM	10 AM	9 AM
1 PM	12 PM	11 AM	10 AM
2 PM	1 PM	12 PM	11 AM
3 PM	2 PM	1 PM	12 PM
4 PM	3 PM	2 PM	1 PM
5 PM	4 PM	3 PM	2 PM
6 PM	5 PM	4 PM	3 PM
7 PM	6 PM	5 PM	4 PM
8 PM	7 PM	6 PM	5 PM

Thanks to How to Add a Table to Blogger Blogspot Post for help adding the table to this blog post and Blogspot 101 – Background Color for how to change the background color of the table.