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That date and time is reported by your server. It is NOT translated to your local timezone, unlike what Joomla! does by default and what you see in other components. Joomla and its components save the time in GMT and then use either the "Server timezone" or the "Timezone" set up by the currently logged in user to display it.

Remember that the time displayed in WAF Configuration is used for blocking the login to the backend, i.e. it has to be consulted in two different situations:

1. In the login page, therefore preventing access to the login page for users who are not already logged in.
2. In the backend, with a user logged in, therefore preventing access to the site even if you are already logged in (you have a login cookie).

If we ask Joomla! for the current date and time, #1 returns Joomla's "server timezone" (which is misleading; in the current Joomla versions it's "site timezone" and has nothing to do with the server) whereas #2 returns the logged in user's timezone. Now, it's possible to have a site with server timezone set to New York and a user with his timezone set to Mumbai. This would mean they'd never be able to log into the site since when the "current time" reported by Joomla lets them access the login page (#1) it doesn't let them access the backend (#2). When the "current time" reported by Joomla lets them access the site (#2) they don't have access to the login page (#1).

The only solution to that is to consult the time returned by the server itself, without any timezone translation. And that's what we do.

The caveat in this case is that at this very moment and for the next two weeks the US -where your server is located- is in daylights savings time whereas Europe -where you live- is not. As a result you get an one hour time drift which will disappear magically in two weeks.

I've been doing support for our software since late 2006. I've been through 23 daylight savings changes. Every time, every six months, I have to explain how timezones work. I appreciate you not asking me anything further to that. Timezones are complicated and boggle the mind. You'll just have to take my word for it.

Are you sure the server is physically located in France? This is entirely different than being hosted with a French company. For example, I have a server located in Dallas which I am renting from a British company. When I started doing web development professionally back in 2004 we had rented a server from a Greek company but the actual server was in Amsterdam. Servers which are expected to serve international traffic tend to be where there are lots of datacenters with reasonably cheap to low latency, fiber backbone and cheap electricity. In Europe this means Amsterdam, London and Frankfurt. Sure, there's the odd datacenter in Paris, France or even Heraklion, Greece but I'd be surprised if you actually had a server in such an odd location, far away from the backbone and cheap electricity.

Also I have to tell you that you're right about the server time using Joomla's timezone. I checked again, we use the default Joomla server timezone as defined in Global Configuration. I've also confirmed that it's showing the correct time on three different sites. Is it possible that either your server is using the wrong timezone OR you are using the wrong timezone in Global Configuration? Remember that even if most of the year two places are in the same timezone they might have different daylight savings time (DST) switchover dates. For example, while the US switched to DST on March 11th, Mexico switches over on April 1st. This means that choosing the wrong timezone (Mexican vs US city) would result in the wrong time being displayed. Same happens with France vs Algeria (Algeria does not have DST at all).

Time zones are political instruments and have nothing at all to do with time or geography. Therefore, time zones are complicated.

Sorry, I cannot reproduce this anywhere else. Your problem seems to be a combination of the operating system timezone, the server timezone in the Joomla configuration and the timezone you have configured for your Joomla user.

As I said, I know that when all these timezones are set up correctly what you see is also correct. I have verified it with servers under my control.

Since this is an issue unrelated to our software (in fact, the time and date is formatted by Joomla itself) I am closing this ticket.