[Darkwaltz4]

credits_time.php is the scheduled task for vbcredits, runs every midnight. basically:

gives birthday credits to those whose birthday it is

checks if there are any new referrals to validate. if they check out, they get added to the refferer (vbulletin actually doesnt save this so my hack has to), then applies the referral award and referee incentive (kind of a thanks for including your referrer, which sometimes they dont)

applies time and activity credits, if its been the number of days you specified (normally 1 for daily, but could be like 7 for 'paychecks' seen in other hacks, or whatever days you want :-p)

Also, all credits applied naturally respect the on/off settings of the recipients as well as their additive referral bonuses, although the new values dont take effect until AFTER this script runs, not during it.

So, a pretty essential file. A bunch of other points hacks dont use crons because they are tricky to do without bogging down someone with a thousand queries, so requires some slightly more advanced sql knowledge. These hacks then require session type systems with more data, which gets more complicated and buggy and so on :-p