:vsmiley: Of course if you really want to accomodate all users, such as those that use the Islamic or Jewish calendars etc. you should consider using Unix timestamp - a long integer containing the number of seconds between the Unix Epoch (January 1 1970 00:00:00 GMT) and the time specified - and corresponding converter classes :devil:
Sorry, I was feeling impish and playing devil’s advocate.
Just that other cultures don’t use the same calendar, eg. for the Jewish it might be a few thousand years more, Chinese even more, Islam a few hundred years less. Some have months based on a solar cycle, some lunar. And month names are different too.
But AFAK it would be safe enough to use 2014 for your site as it will be the year for most and hopefully others will be “bi-calendar literate”.
All countries now use the Gregorian calendar as their official calendar even if some groups within those countries still work to an older calendar for specific purposes. China was the last country in the world to switch to the Gregorian calendar as their official calendar about 104 years ago. Unless your application is dealing with one of those specific purposes for which an older calendar is still used (eg. the calculation of Easter) then there is no need to worry about any of those calendars.
It is now officially the 3rd or 4th (depending on timezone) of January in the common era year 2014 in every country in the world.