Magento – Order Confirmation email: How to get order date with correct store timezone

To send different order conformation email depending on specific criteria you would either have to :

1. Rewrite sendNewOrderEmail() in Mage_Sales_Model_Order and add logic to check the template

2. Disable magento "order confirmation email" in system config, then create a custom module to send your email by coping logic from sendNewOrderEmail() using event/observer

3. For simple text changes, you could use template logic {{if order.customer_group_id}} or {{depend order.customer_group_id}} but they seem to only evaluate true/false condition, therefore for more advance logic you could include a block

{{block type='core/template' area='frontend' template='sales/custom_logic.phtml' order=$order}}

In custom_logic.phtml

<?php
  $order = $this->getOrder()

  if($order->getCustomerGroupId() == 1){
     ///do
   ....

See Magento Email Template If Statements

There is no native function to get the GMT time value.

To get the GMT value of order created datatime.

I have rewrite the Mage_Sales_Model_Order and write new function to get the GMT.

(Refer magento model rewrite Tutorial)

public function getGmtValue()
{
    $timeZone = $this->getCreatedAtStoreDate()->getTimezone();
    $currentTimezone = date_default_timezone_get();
    date_default_timezone_set($timeZone);
    //Get GMT
    $value = date('P', strtotime($this->getCreatedAtStoreDate()));
    date_default_timezone_set($currentTimezone);
    return 'GMT'.$value;
}

Now you can get GMT value in email template by following code.

{{var order.getGmtValue()}}

I have refer these two links to get the GMT value

1.how do i get greenwich mean time in php

2.datetime to timestamp in php