These are a bunch of functions that deal with printing out dates/times from PHP. All functions use the PHP DateTime class to print out the date/time in the passed timezone, or in the default timezone set by the user Example output from the time_ago() function, called from the command line with the following command: > php -f test.php +1 year: March 11, 2012 at 1:08pm +1 month: April 11, 2011 at 1:08pm +1 week: March 18, 2011 at 1:08pm +4 days: Next Tuesday at 1:08pm +3 hours: 3 hours from now +2 minutes: 2 minutes from now +20 seconds: 20 seconds from now -1 year: March 11, 2010 at 1:08pm -1 month: February 11 at 1:08pm -1 week: March 4 at 1:08pm -4 days: Monday at 1:08pm -3 hours: 3 hours ago -2 minutes: 2 minutes ago -20 seconds: 20 seconds ago > time_ago(string/int $date [, string $timezone]); $date can either be a string (such as "+1 day") or a unix timestamp. $timezone must be a string which is a valid timezone from this list: http://www.php.net/manual/en/timezones.php The default timezone can be set before the function is called using > date_default_timezone_set("America/Denver"); The default timezone is set to "America/Denver" in time_functions.php to ensure that PHP doesn't complain.