Timezone problems

[Roy Hazan]

Dear all, I have taken on a website using mysql and php.
I have discovered many problems with loading and saving dates.
I am coding using mysql 4.0.13 running on a US timezone, but the website is for the UK.
So, when I save or load dates, they ar always 7/8 hours behind.

I used the function from_unixtime() to return a date that PHP could read.
I used the function unix_timestamp() to save a date from PHP format.
I did this to overcome the timezone differences.

However, any dates before Jan 1 1970 come up as Jan 1 1970 in PHP.
I also need to distinguish between fixed dates such as the date of birth and time-dependent dates such as a due date.

Has anyone any ideas on how I can get round these issues?

Would it be better to write a custom PHP routine to convert between timezones or is there a better way to handle this issue?

Any ideas would be really helpful.