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.

[bspiller82]

Works good now. Is there a way to force it to tell the age so it doesn't say
(Age: Not telling! )?

[ChurchMedia]

Originally Posted by bspiller82

Works good now. Is there a way to force it to tell the age so it doesn't say
(Age: Not telling! )?

Not if they didn't give their birth year -- there's no way to calculate it. You can change the "not telling" message to something else if you want. Just search the script for "Not telling!" and change it to "Year not given" or whatever.

Enjoy,

[Lionel]

I have a small problem. The email, the thread states the correct date but in the posts it shows as

Here are today's birthdays:

was born on November 30 (Age: Not telling! )

missing the username, the age. Sometimes the age states 30 when it should have been 40

[Lionel]

I am using 3.01 and all I am getting for username is a blank and date is way off. Age does not display, even though the year is specified.

[Lionel]

ok, works for me now. I was placing code before {

also the instructions are missing
$bday_title .= $username.", ";
that I found in one of the post

Great hack, thanks.

[MysticMoon]

Great hack & had no problems with it.

I was wondering though, is it possible to change the post icon?
Right now it's using the standard icon1.gif & I'd like it to use a cupcake
one I have instead.

Thanks

[KW802]

Originally Posted by Lionel

ok, works for me now. I was placing code before {

also the instructions are missing
$bday_title .= $username.", ";
that I found in one of the post

Great hack, thanks.

ChurchMedia,

Thanks for the hack! You may want to fix the first post to have the above correction though. It threw me off also.

Kevin

[KW802]

Originally Posted by MysticMoon

Great hack & had no problems with it.

I was wondering though, is it possible to change the post icon?
Right now it's using the standard icon1.gif & I'd like it to use a cupcake
one I have instead.

Thanks

MysticMoon,

In the /includes/cron/birthday.php file find.....

// Creating Thread
$DB_site->query("
INSERT INTO " . TABLE_PREFIX . "thread(title, lastpost, forumid, open, replycount, postusername, postuserid, lastposter, dateline,iconid, visible)
VALUES
('" . addslashes(htmlspecialchars($title3)) . "', " . TIMENOW . ", $greetings_forum,
1, 0, '". addslashes($greeter_name) ."', $greeter,
'". addslashes($greeter_name) ."', " . TIMENOW . ", 0, 1)");
$threadinfo['threadid'] = $DB_site->insert_id();

// Creating Post
$DB_site->query("
INSERT INTO " . TABLE_PREFIX . "post(threadid, parentid, title, username, userid, dateline, pagetext, allowsmilie,
showsignature, ipaddress, iconid, visible)
VALUES
($threadinfo[threadid], 0, '" . addslashes(htmlspecialchars($title3)) . "',
'" . addslashes($greeter_name) . "', $greeter, " . TIMENOW . ",
'" . addslashes($birthday_greeting_thread) . "', 1, 1, 0, 0, 1)");
$post['postid'] = $DB_site->insert_id();

.... and change the two zeros that are highlighted to instead be the iconid of the new icon you want to use.

[ChurchMedia]

Originally Posted by Lionel

also the instructions are missing
$bday_title .= $username.", ";
that I found in one of the post

I fixed it in the instructions. Sorry about that!

[Megareus Rex]

I see the creator of the hack has 3.0 Gold. Any plans to modify the hack to work on 3.0.3? (The code for birthday.php has changed some, so I'm not sure how to do it now.)