Countdown

A configurable countdown widget for Flarum 2.0, built as a widget for fof/forum-widgets-core. Same skeleton as linkrobins/html-widget and linkrobins/markdown-widget.

What it does

Renders a four-box countdown — days, hours, minutes, seconds — ticking down to an admin-configured moment. When it hits zero, shows a configurable "done" message. Optionally wraps the whole thing in a link.

Features

• Configurable target via the browser's native date+time picker (year, month, day, hour, minute)
• Timezone-aware — admin picks the IANA timezone for the target, and every visitor counts down to the same actual instant regardless of where they are
• One tick per second with smooth Mithril redraws
• Optional title + FontAwesome icon above the countdown
• Done state with a configurable message (defaults to 🎉) when the countdown reaches zero
• Optional link wrapping the whole widget — useful for "launching in… [click for details]"
• Theme-friendly — uses Flarum 2's CSS custom properties so colors pick up your theme automatically
• Tabular-numerics font feature so digits don't jitter as they tick

Requirements

• Flarum 2.0 or later
• PHP 8.2 or later
• fof/forum-widgets-core installed and enabled

Settings

• Title (optional) — shown above the countdown
• Icon (optional) — FontAwesome class shown next to the title (e.g. fas fa-rocket)
• Target date and time — uses the browser's date picker; covers year, month, day, hour, and minute
• Timezone — IANA name like UTC, America/New_York, Europe/London, Asia/Tokyo. There's a "Use my timezone" button that fills this with whatever your browser thinks the local zone is
• Done message — shown when the countdown hits zero (defaults to 🎉)
• Link URL (optional) — if set, the countdown becomes a clickable link

How the timezone math works

The target time is stored as a "naive" wall-clock datetime (e.g. 2026-12-31T23:59) paired with a timezone (e.g. America/New_York). At render time, the widget converts that pair into an absolute UTC instant using the browser's Intl.DateTimeFormat API, which correctly handles daylight-saving transitions for the target date. Every visitor's browser then counts down to that single instant, so the displayed remaining-time stays consistent across the audience regardless of where each viewer is.

This avoids the most common countdown widget bug: "the admin set it for 11pm but my visitors in Tokyo see a different time."