What are the best practices for handling date and time functions in PHP to ensure compatibility and avoid errors related to timezone settings?

When working with date and time functions in PHP, it's important to set the correct timezone to avoid errors related to timezone settings. One way to ensure compatibility is to explicitly set the timezone using the `date_default_timezone_set()` function at the beginning of your script. This will ensure that all date and time functions operate in the specified timezone.

// Set the default timezone to UTC
date_default_timezone_set('UTC');

// Now you can safely work with date and time functions
$currentDateTime = date('Y-m-d H:i:s');
echo $currentDateTime;