[_ck_]

Remember that the date will be relative to worldwide visitors unless you list the timezone (which will be meaningless to people far outside the timezone).

What I do on some code is list the freshness in plain english but make the title of the element the original time.

ie.

<span class=timetitle title="<?php echo date("r",strtotime($topic->topic_time)); ?>"><?php topic_time(); ?></span>

Then when you mouse over the “3 days ago” it will show you the original time (in mysql format which can be changed). Then use CSS to make a light underline so the user knows it has some kind of function.