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.

[MysticMoon]

Originally Posted by KW802

MysticMoon,

In the /includes/cron/birthday.php file find..... .... and change the two zeros that are highlighted to instead be the iconid of the new icon you want to use.

Thank you so much, it worked perfect

[xug]

Installed, works great, get daily an email with at least 30 birthdays.

PS:

ChurchMedia, I did send you a PM, if you have some time, please take a look at it, thank you.

[GamerJunk.net]

Great Hack! I installed it and it works perfectly on my Member News Forum.

One suggesstion, for the next release why not add some coding in the birthday greet to pull random quotes or images off of a database so every birthday thread isn't the same?

[Sal Collaziano]

I love it! Installed!

[ambrosious]

Does anyone know how to edit it so that people with <250 posts are not included?

[TwinsForMe]

[high]* TwinForMe clicks install [/high]

[TwinsForMe]

It doesn't seem to be working.

When I installed, I ran it manually and it worked. It's been a few days and no birthday threads or emails have been sent and I know there have been birthdays. I tried to run it manually and nothing happens.

[venomx]

I have had this installed for a while now. Finally got a memebr who had a birthday yesterday yet the thread wasnt made and there was no post made. Any ideas?

[streetfighter]

Cool Hack!

I installed it and works fine!
But a annoying problem i noticed is, whenever the thread is created.... it lists the birthday of yesterday and not today!
My board time is set to gmt +530
my userid has +530...
So on an 28th December, 2004.... the thread comes up with title Happy Birthday ..... to all on 27th December, 2004!

I dont understand this behaviour!
Can anyone help?

I tested this by running from cron job, using run now... the logs wud shows the current date and time i.e. 28th december, 2004 and time when it was ran! But the thread lists 1 day older birthdays!

Anyideas?
I am using VB 3.0.1

Help!

[ozmazdaclub]

TwinsForMe: Did you change the forum id and other parts that needed changing?