 date field date fields the cck date field uses the date api to create date fields and widgets you have a choice of creating an iso date or a unix timestamp if you are porting information from another application you may want to create a field using a type that matches the source data some advantages and disadvantages of each include datestamp unix timestamp stores the date as an integer takes up less room in the database because it s smaller often easier to use for date calculations because you can increase or decrease it just by adding or subtracting seconds it is the format used by php date functions it must be filled with a complete date year month day hour minute second so you sometimes have to arbitrarily set some of these values even if they are not applicable date iso date stores the date in an iso format yyyymmddthh mm ss the data is in a humanreadable form you can use it for incomplete dates ie only a year or only a year and a month and pad the other values with zeros so it does not appear to be any more precise than it really is it is a format that is internationallyrecognized and it is used asis on many web sites and in many applications datetime stores the date in the database s native date format yyyymmdd hh mm ss the data is in a humanreadable form you can use it for incomplete dates ie only a year or only a year and a month and pad the other values with zeros so it does not appear to be any more precise than it really is it can take advantage of the database s date handling functions without any conversion date widgets there are several widgets to choose from to control how users can enter data for this field text field the text field date widget uses a custom format set in the field settings like 31122008 as a fallback the widget will try to accept input allowed by the php strtotime function  this allows the user to type a date in in many natural formats like march 31 1980 there are limitations to strtotime so setting a custom format is more reliable the strtotime function will assume date shortcuts are in american format mm dd yy and strtotime will not work for dates prior to 1970 select list the select list date widget presents users with a dropdown list or textfield for each part of the date year month day hour etc the whole selector is collapsed onto a single line using css except for the timezone selector if datespecific timezones are collected the selector is highly configurable and you can set it up to use 5 10 or 15 minute increments for minutes and seconds or make some parts of the selector use textfields instead of dropdowns useful to allow any year without creating a huge dropdown selector jquery popup calendar the javascript popup calendar is offered as an input alternative if the date popup module is installed the date is split into date and time fields and the date field uses a jquery popup calendar and the time field uses a jquery timeselector widget that only allows valid time input if you have the date repeat module enabled you will also see options for each of those widgets that include a repeat options selection form that will allow the user to choose values like every week or the last tuesday  