What are some best practices for handling date formats in PHP to avoid inconsistencies like the one mentioned in the forum thread?

The issue with handling date formats in PHP is that different systems may use different date formats, leading to inconsistencies. To avoid this, it's best practice to always specify the date format explicitly when parsing or outputting dates in PHP. This can be done using the `DateTime` class and its `format()` method.

// Specify the desired date format
$dateFormat = 'Y-m-d H:i:s';

// Parse a date string into a DateTime object
$dateString = '2022-01-15 14:30:00';
$date = DateTime::createFromFormat($dateFormat, $dateString);

// Output the date in the desired format
echo $date->format($dateFormat);