Automatic Birthday Thread

This hack is inspired by the Birthday Hack for vB2 by Logician. It will automatically create a Happy Birthday thread in a specified forum, listing the people with birthdays for that day. Then other members can post their happy birthday wishes in the thread.

I had the original hack installed on my VB2 board and when I upgraded to VB3 my members missed it. Luckily, it's really easy to implement.

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Files to modify: /includes/cron/birthday.php
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Instructions are in the attached text file. The mod should take about 5 minutes.

Be sure to change the variables that say // CHANGE ME

You can customize the message in the $birthday_greeting_thread variable. You could also ad IMG tags with an image of some kind, like in my screenshot.

Note that you MUST turn on BB CODE in you birthday forum in order for this to work properly.
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Enjoy (and thanks for the inspiration, Logician!)
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New in Version 2.0:

Bug fixes:
> More accurate age calculation. Sometimes it was a year off.
> The correct thread shows up in the last thread post on the forum home page.
> HTML is not required to be turned on in the birthday forum.
> Most of the code is completely rewritten to vB3 standards.

New features:
> Improved look
> Birthday line now says: (User) was born on (date), (AGE: xx)
> If the year is not given, it says "Not telling! " for age.
> The admin is emailed a list of the birthdays with links to their profiles and a link to the happy birthday thread.
> If you use the uShop/uCash hack, you can give birthday points to the users

Upgrading:

Since the code has changed so drastically, I suggest starting with a fresh copy of birthday.php and following the instructions for a new install.

[jugo]

Mine has an issue...I run the Cron...but it just sits there and nothing happens.

Here is the CHANGEME Lines:

PHP Code:

if ($emails)
{
    log_cron_action('Birthday Email sent to: ' . $emails, $nextitem);
    $birthday_greeting_thread = "Waddup My Peeps,\n\n[b]Here are today's Birthdays![/b]\n\n";
    $birthday_greeting_thread = $birthday_greeting_thread.$bday_people;
    $birthday_greeting_thread = $birthday_greeting_thread."\n\n[i]w00t w00t! I hope you like getting OLD!!![/i]";

    $greetermail="birthdayfairy@s3squad.com"; //CHANGE ME: Birthday greeter email
    $greeter=2; // CHANGE ME: Birthday greeter user ID
    $greeter_name="jugo????"; //CHANGE ME: Birthday greeter user name
    $greetings_forum=2; // CHANGE ME: Birthday forum ID
    $todays_date11= date("F j, Y", mktime (date("H")+$timeset, date("i"), date("s"), date("m"), date("d"), date("Y")));
    $title3= "Happy Birthday to "; 
    $title3.= $bday_title; 
    $title3.= "on "; 
    $title3.=$todays_date11;

// Creating Thread 


[ChurchMedia]

It's working. Mine does that too. I'm not sure why it's not giving us a "done" message. It shows up in the cron logs, though. If anyone figures out what the problem is, let me know. Fortunately it isn't a big problem.

[bspiller82]

It seems after I upgraded from the old Birthday script to the new it stopped working. There is no errors that I see just that it's not posting the thread.

[venomx]

I am going to install this after the cron thing works right :P

[trackpads]

Is there a way to make it use Pets money instead of UCash?

Thanks again!!!

-Jason

[ChurchMedia]

Originally Posted by venomx

I am going to install this after the cron thing works right :P

The cron message has never finished. It's really not a big deal and doesn't hurt anything. You never even see the message unless you run it manually.


So, I wouldn't worry about it and go ahead and install the hack

[ChurchMedia]

Originally Posted by bspiller82

It seems after I upgraded from the old Birthday script to the new it stopped working. There is no errors that I see just that it's not posting the thread.

I suggest you start over with a fresh copy of birthday.php (without any hacks at all) and give it another shot.

[ChurchMedia]

Originally Posted by trackpads

Is there a way to make it use Pets money instead of UCash?

Thanks again!!!

-Jason

Sure you can. I don't know what the code would be, though. Take a look at the code for the Pets hack and find the lines that give Pets money. Just insert those lines in place of the UCash lines. They should look very similar the to the Ucash code. Make sure the User ID variable looks the same as the Ucash hack and you should be okay.

[bspiller82]

Originally Posted by ChurchMedia

I suggest you start over with a fresh copy of birthday.php (without any hacks at all) and give it another shot.

I did that and it diddn't work. I'll retry it with a fresh copy again and see what happens.

[jugo]

OK... it works. Awesome.

When i run it manually it just sits there but as a cron job it works just fine...I in cluded the /you hack and it does soem pretty cool things.

OK...Is there a way to make it only post the birthdays for those who have recent activity in the last xx days AND with at least xx posts?