[RESOLVED] determining time elapsed

[system_critical]

What is the best way to keep track of time since a user has posted? I want to allow one post per hour for my project and each post has a time-stamp in the DB. Should I use date() to compare to the time-stamp and maybe epoch seconds? The noob rides again. Thanks for the help.

[devinemke]

convert all times to UNIX timestamps and compare them

[Weedpacket]

Try to select all posts by the user that are less than an hour old (use the date time functions in MySQL). If you get any, then they posted within the last hour.