Auto Email/PM for Birthday Greetings Hack. Are you interested?
 

Hiyas,

I am on the verge of completing a hack which will automatically send greeting private messages or emails (or BOTH) to your members who have birthdays.

The code has a complex algorithm so before releasing it I want it tested extensively. I know that I could publish the hack in BETA Releases board, but IMO that board does not work as it should be. I had published 2 of my hacks in that board before to get some feedback about how they were doing in other's boards, but despite my insistent requests, I got none. :speechless:

So instead of making the hack publicly available to all, I wanted be tested by a small group who will really interested in the hack and return some feedback to me to get it improved.

If you want to test it and will return comments to me, please provide me with your email so that I can send you the hack.

A few important notes:

1- You will not get a "non-complete" or "too buggy" hack. I'm now testing the ALPHA version in my local test board and as for beta I will first install it to my "original board", make sure it's working and then I'll send it to you as a BETA tester. You will get a code that have been tested and proved succesful in my original board. However you can test it in your test board if you wish, your call..(If not, backup db anyway!)

2- This hack will NOT require CRON jobs, so anybody can use it.

3- Installation will NOT be a pain in the neck. 4 Steps and you're done..

4- Version of your board should not be a problem either. (provided that it's 2.x.x)

Thank you!

Logician

YES .. simple answer... i wud love this hack...

Yes, good idea!
Logician, i will install this hack after release ;)

Sounds really cool...If your still accepting beta testers let me know...

Dark_Wizard yes..I've finished the hack and installed it in my original board and it's working without any problems.. And it would be nice if someone else tries in his board too. So I'm still accepting beta testers. Please send me your email address so that I can send you the hack.. Thank you.. :)

Some screenshots attached (maybe it can motivate you to try the hack) :)

The private message user gets: (send automatically by the hack of course!)

The daily greeting report Admin gets (optional) about when and how the hack celebrated member's birthdays..

I love this hack !! I want have it !! :cool:

When do you want to release the first public version?

Thanks !

Never unless someone helps me testing it out..

5 people asked me to be beta testers and I sent them the code and I got no response in return at all.. :ermm:

I use the hack in my board now and I have no problems at all. But I just want to be sure it's perfectly ok before releasing it since it's algorithm is not very simple (installation is easy though) So I really need some feedback about how it is doing, any problems etc. from other people.. It's even ok to get a message with 3 words: "intalled, no problems"..This is actually what "beta testing" is lol..

I hate to disappoint people who is waiting for the hack but if nobody helps out, I am not going to release it, sorry..

Regards,
Logician

I would like to test your script ! I would send you my feedback after the installation!

ok pls pm/email me your email address, so that I can send it to you.. thank you

I've installed this and waitnig on a bday now...thx for the chance to help test this....

Dark_Wizard may I suggest creating a few fake users and setting their birthdays to tomorrow. :) This will both save you from unnecessary waiting and also you will have a chance to see if member gets pms/emails or not.

BTW. thank you for informing me..

I thought of that as well but have 5 bdays coming up over the next few days...sorry for not getting back to you right away...I was on vacation last week when you sent it...

Yes please, would be more than happy to provide feedback. I actually received a birthday greeting from either this board or the other VB support board and thought this was already released. Was that your hack in action? :)

My email address is webmom@familycorner.com and I promise to install it and provide feedback right away!

Thanks!

No FCorner, I havent released this hack yet, if you didnt get it from me via email very recently, no it's not my hack. I am not aware of any other similar hack either.

I have sent the hack to your email address and waiting to hear from you..Thanks for the help..

Regards,
Logician

This is an awesome hack...my members love it and knew right away it was auto-generated. Everything is working great!

Oops...here is a link to the thread generated by this hack

Dark_Wizard: Have you linked the page to demonstrate or to report a bug? If it's a bug report, page seems quite fine to me lol. If it's to demonstrate, my apologies..

And a small bug I catched: If user enters only date of his birthday and leaves the year blank, the variable that holds user's age will be 2002 hehe.. (Hack will greet his birthday anyway even if he is too "old"). :) I'll fix that in the release, in the meantime you can delete this variable from your templates if you want..

BTW Thx for the feedback..

Ps. Unreal Tournament is my favorite game and I'm (was) a good player too.. Cant find time to play for months though.. :tired: You board reminded me my passion to Unreal :D

I just installed the hack you sent me. I changed my birthdate to today to test it and nothing had happened so far. Am I missing a step somewhere?

I would happily beta test this for, If you are still looking for testers, Email me @ webmaster@gamblingforums.net

phil

@Boofo: yep patience.. :)

First set your birthday to tomarrow, the day hack is installed will not be greeted. Secondly be patient. Hack does not greet the birthdays at exactly 12.00 AM, they can be greeted anytime in the day, so you may have to wait for sometime. This behaviour is intentional so that your server load wont increase..;)

@freeshares1: hack sent to your email, thx..

Regards,
Logician

i will happily test this out providing there are no mysql queries to run...

EMAIL: rapstar10@hotmail.com

sorry Mist, it adds a table to MYSQL, so not SQL query free..

The link was to provide a demo for anyone wanting to see it....the hack works fine. the install was great....UT player too huh? That's my passion and waiting patiently for UT2003!

That's why I would have made a lousy doctor...no patience. :) Will set the birthdate and let you know how it goes. By the way, is there a way to maybe have it do an e-mail AND the forum, if I wanted to do both of them?

It worked flawlessly. It sent the PM at around 12.52 am (server time). Now, what would make this hack perfect, is if you could do the greeting according to the users set time, if they have set it in the options. It showed me having a birthday 2 hours before I had it set for. It showed it on the 27th at 10 pm and I had it set for the 28th. My server is GMT and my time is is central time (GMT -6).
Just a thought. I did set a phony year to make sure it worked right. :)

Another suggestion...is there a way to control whether my signature shows up in the birthday message to the user, whether it be the forum mode, pm mode or email mode? I have it enabled in my options but don't necessarily want it in the birthday message.

@boofo: Unfortunately I cant make it work according to user's time settings. It requires too much work and more importantly hack will be awkard and unstable. However I can suggest you setting "timeset" variable inside the hack options.

For example if your server is in GMT-5 but most of your users time setting is GMT+2 set your variable as "+7". Then hack will greet birtdays according to this setting and will work better at least for most of the users.

As for creating the thread, yep I plan to change its design. In fact I didnt plan to add a feature to "create a thread", hack was supposed to send pm or email or both only. But Crazy Mofo asked me to add such a feature (and I didnt hear from him anymore.) and I added the feature. Now it is requested that it will both create a thread and send pm(or email). I'll see what I can do. I think I can modify it to work this way.

Phony years dont stop the hack from working however, user's age would be odd, for sure :)

I understand the time issue, but is there any way that it could be delayed until 12 noon on the birthday? Then it would be sure to get everyone on their birthday, no matter what timezone they were in, since GMT can only go +12 at the most. Does that make sense? :)

As far as the email, pm and thread option, it would be nice to have any combination of them that you want. It would appeal to everyone that way with it's flexibility.

You can set the variable timeset what ever number you want. So eg. this works: $timeset=17 or $timeset=-44.

The problem is it is not possible for the hack to get into details for all users that have a birthday in a specific day. When hack is triggered, it just checks if it has already greeted the birthday for "today" and if not gets birthday of ALL users once and send them greetings, again once. I cant make it remember "when birthday should be greeted for which user".

Consider the "today's birthday" field in your main page. It has this behaviour either. For example it lists 2 birtdays for A and B in your main page (according to page viewer's time zone) and the page viewer may send A a PM to greet his birthday. But maybe it's not his birthday according to A's time zone yet, there may be 2 hours left for instance..

But nothing we can do about it, it's really too complex to add such a feature..

ok, I understnad a little better now. What you have there is fine. I need to ask, though, if there is no year after the birthday for the user, can it just show the happy birthday part and not show anything for the age part? Like parse it if there is not a year available? Just a thought...:)

What is showed depends to you because you set it inside the templates. If you remove the relevant $birthday_child[yas] variable from your template, it wont display the age. However I will add a feature that if the year is blank, this variable will be just "-" instead of 2002 :)

I see what you are saying but I want the age displayed if there is a year and not if there isn't. Is there a way to do this? Or is that what you meant?

BUG FIX

I found a bug and fixed it, if you install the hack, please you fix that too:

Edit index.php:

Find:

and REPLACE it AS:

If you dont fix it, hack will stop greeting the birthdays as of today (first day of June). After the fix hack will go on greetings from the date it stopped (Last day of May) and will not miss birthdays in the meantime..

Although not likely, please let me know if you have any problems afterwards..

Regards,
Logician

yes me too as beta tester..

mail@spieleplanet.com

I would love to help beta test this.

corey@ravio.com - Email

What is the expected release date on this?

Very soon.. After the last bug fix, I sent the script to Highlander and c-pr0mpt and when I get their feedback, I will release it (provided that everything is ok)..

Would it be too difficult to add an option where you can specify how recently a user has visited? I don't think members who haven't visited in, let's say, six months will be coming back to the boards (at least on our site!) :)

Look forward to this release!