"the db will take care of i when the data is inserted...just elave the value blank... "
That won't work.
Only MySQL automatically fills the timestamp kolumn (a feature they added because they have no trigger-functionality)
Naug: If you want to enter the current time, just enter 'NOW()'
INSERT INTO table (timestamp_kolumn) VALUES (NOW());
If you want to enter a different date/time, you must first format that time properly and yes, that will become a string during the insert, but the database will store it as the appropriate datatype.
The formats are listed in the manual of your database.
