Can I do timezone settings in a map with PHP?

[CassianS]

I have a social network site I have been working on for a couple years in PHP/MySQL, I am now re-buidling the whole site from scratch again though. This time around I would really like to add in the ability for users to set a timezone for times on my site.So with that said, I am asking on a guide from start to finish of the steps I need to include to do this please. My old site used mysql datetime for all dates and times and it worked great but I read that it is best to use like a text filed and store all dates and times with UTC, can someone explain how I could do this? Would I still be able to use the now() function in php to save a time to the mysql?Also I have seen the list that php can generate of all the timezones, the one where it shows like a million (not really) but I am wondering, would it be possible to show some sort of map with images or something and link to the main timezones?Please any tips for setting a users timezone, I can do that part, but once I have a user's timezone saved and ready to use, how can I make sure the users see's the correct time and how do I save times in the correct time.Sorry if this was confusing, any help would be great though, thanks.