What best practices can PHP developers follow to avoid errors related to time changes like daylight saving time when working with deadlines and timestamps?

When working with deadlines and timestamps in PHP, developers can avoid errors related to time changes like daylight saving time by using Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) instead of local time. By storing and manipulating timestamps in UTC, developers can ensure consistency and accuracy across different time zones and daylight saving time changes.

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

// Get the current timestamp in UTC
$currentTimestamp = time();

// Convert a UTC timestamp to a human-readable date/time
echo date('Y-m-d H:i:s', $currentTimestamp);