Understanding the Issue
During an upgrade from Tiki 27 to Tiki 29, certain date configuration values might not be displayed correctly even if they were migrated correctly. Tiki 29 introduced structural improvements to how date and time formats are retrieved from the stored values in the database. To simplify, legacy configurations and values from Tiki 27 remain actives untill you force a global refresh that will affect different areas and dialog boxes, selectors, dropdown, etc. In some cases, it can confuse the new version’s date-handling system, resulting in invalid date displays.
For example:
- Expected: 2025-08-21 15:00
- Broken: -00-yy 15:00
This can appear in:
- Tracker item views
- List plugin date range filters
- Customsearch plugin date range filters
- Tiki modules outputs
- ...and other date-driven fields
How to Fix the Issue
Login as the "admin" user or any user with Admins permissions
Open the Date Settings Panel. To do so, open the main Tiki menu:
Settings → Control Panels → Global Setup (admin side menu) → General Settings → Date and Time tabs
Reset the Date Format Options
Resetting these options forces Tiki to rebuild with valid defaults.
You can keep the Displayed Time Zone and Time Zone settings as they are. It’s a good idea to note your other preferences somewhere, as they can be re-applied once the linkage between the database values and the front-end interface has been rebuilt.
For the other settings, in this panel, locate the date-related configuration fields and reset them to the Tiki default values: Click the small rewind arrow beside each to revert them to default values.
Especially look for the Date/time selectors and the Fields display order that in this case where adapted to European country with a Day-Month-Year format.
Apply the Changes to save your settings once all date options have been reset.
Rebuild the Index and Clear Cache
This ensures all templates and displays are refreshed with the corrected settings you need to "refresh" rebuild the Unified Search Index.
You have several methods for that, you can use the administration user interface.
Using the admin user interface
If you have a small to medium Tiki you can use the admin user interface. For big Tiki (if you have a lot of pages, articles, trackeritems, etc.) it is advised to use the shell.
Settings → Control Panels → Global Setup (admin side menu) → Main Features → Rebuild index
This will run for a few seconds to minutes and after that we suggest to clear all caches.
Settings → Tiki Cache/Sys Admin → Clear All Cache
Using the shell command
Login as your Tiki user with SSH (don't use the root user!).
Navigate to your Tiki directory and enter it to use the Tiki Console.
Run the following command to rebuild the Unified Search Index.
php console.php i:r -p
Then refresh the Tiki caches
php console.php c:c
Verify the Result
Check your the previous object you saw the issue (trackeritems or customsearch). Dates should now appear as expected.
Reapply Your Preferred Display Format
After confirming the fix, you can safely reconfigure date formats (for example, day-month-year or month-day-year) to match your usual regional preference.
A Note from Open Source Solutions
At OpenSource Solutions, we regularly assist users and organizations in upgrading, maintaining, and optimizing their Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware. Our goal is to make each upgrade smooth and each system reliable — whether for a small team or a large knowledge management environment.
If you encounter similar issues or need assistance maintaining your Tiki instance, feel free to reach out.
We’re always happy to help keep your Tiki running efficiently and securely.