Automatic Greeting Email/PM/Threads for Member Birthdays

This hack will automatically greet the birthdays of your board members by sending them:

• Private Messages
• Emails
• Both
• or by creating a birthday celebration thread in a specific forum.

Features:
* Does NOT require cron jobs so everybody can use it regardless of their server settings/rights.
* You can send PMs, emails (or both) or you can choose to send them PM if they can receive PM or else send email.
* The Hack can create special greeting threads for birthdays. (optional)
* Some usergroups (like banned users) can be excluded from automatic greetings.
* Admin can choose to receive a daily report via Email or PM about the greeted birthdays. (optional)
* Compatible with ALL vbulletin versions I know.
* Carefully coded to not to increase your SQL load and its quite performance-friendly. (More info about performance issues)
* New Added Feature: To greet only members who have more than X messages or who have visited your board in the last X days, see here
* New Added Feature: You can change his style in the day user has his birthday. Check here)
* New Added Feature: You can play Happy Birthday Song to your members in their birthdays. Check here

The hack is beta tested by many users for a long time before the release and proven to be quite stable. (BTW. thx to all beta testers especially to Dark_Wizard, Boofo, DslTeam, C-Pr0mpt for returning feedback).

WARNING: I strongly suggest:
a) Be careful while installing this hack (especially in step 2). If you install it wrongly, your members may get a lot of irrelevant greetings.
b) To make sure you installed it correctly, turn on DEBUG mode AND administrator notifications in the options of the hack while you are installing it. So the hack will NOT send any notifications to members but only send daily reports to admin. Keep an eye on these reports for a few days and if you made sure you installed it correctly and it works ok, you can safely turn off debug mode.


Enjoy the hack and if you install the hack please click INSTALL, thank you..

Logician \\=^))

[Logician]

Originally posted by Lionel
I installed last night minutes after midnight. I have birthdays today and tomorrow. Nothing is posting yet in the specific thread. :cry:

1- When did you installed the hack (date and time)
2- What time it is now (date and time)
3- Have you set timeset variable?
4- Run this query and tell me what it returns:
SELECT leftdate from timetick where action='birthday';

5- What did you set your server load variable to? What's your estimated daily visitor number of index.php?

6- Are you aware that hack does not greet at exactly 12.00 am, but it will greet at a random hour after midnight, depending on your visitor number you set?

[Lionel]

Originally posted by Logician

1- When did you installed the hack (date and time)
2- What time it is now (date and time)
3- Have you set timeset variable?
4- Run this query and tell me what it returns:
SELECT leftdate from timetick where action='birthday';

5- What did you set your server load variable to? What's your estimated daily visitor number of index.php?

6- Are you aware that hack does not greet at exactly 12.00 am, but it will greet at a random hour after midnight, depending on your visitor number you set?

1-I installed early this morning at 12:05 AM
2-it is 12:40 PM, 12 hours later
3-$timeset=0;
4-query returns 2002-06-12
5-load variable was placed at 15 estimated daily visitors is 2000+
6-I understand that it will not trigger at midnight

[Logician]

Originally posted by Lionel
1-I installed early this morning at 12:05 AM
2-it is 12:40 PM, 12 hours later

You are missing the point that hack will start greeting birthdays the day after you installed the hack ie 13.6.2002 for you.. It's written in the instructions..

[Lionel]

if I manually change the date to 11 in mysql database, will it run it today? I am anxious to see this at work...

[Logician]

yep it will, but be careful to not to enter a wrong date (or date format) there.

[David Bott]

Yesterday at the load value set at 30...it ran at 11:00AM.

Today...With the load value set at 5....it ran at 11:00AM.

[Logician]

Originally posted by David Bott
Yesterday at the load value set at 30...it ran at 11:00AM.

Today...With the load value set at 5....it ran at 11:00AM.

You probably didnt set the timeset variable correctly and although you it's 11.00 AM to you, it's 00.00 AM for your server..

Considering the fact that you have very high number of visitors in your server, numbers like 30 or 5 makes no difference for you. The hack will run VERY VERY close to midnight in your board with these numbers..

[Lionel]

Originally posted by Logician
yep it will, but be careful to not to enter a wrong date (or date format) there.

k, I changed it to yesterday, set the load value at 15, had 36 visitors since and I did a few refreshes of index.php.... well, I guess I'll wait a little...

[David Bott]

## Time difference between the time zone you and your server's time. 
## Set is as a positive or negative number such as -3, +5 etc.
$timeset=-8;

ok...Then maybe clear this up. Would it not always be set at zero then if you want it to run per the serers time? I have it set for -8 which is the time offset for GMT as the forum is set. So..Seeing the server is Calf....What should it be? Boy...it sure seems simple....but guess not.

[Logician]

Originally posted by David Bott
ok...Then maybe clear this up. Would it not always be set at zero then if you want it to run per the serers time? I have it set for -8 which is the time offset for GMT as the forum is set. So..Seeing the server is Calf....What should it be? Boy...it sure seems simple....but guess not.

This clarifies why it greeted at 11.00 am..

It's "Time difference between the time zone you and your server's time." NOT "difference between your server and London".

So if server is in California and so do you, set it to 0.

By setting it to -8, you programmed the hack to start greetings at 8.00AM server time. Since it greeted at 11.00 AM, may I assume that you live somewhere that has 3 hours difference with California?