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 \\=^))

[David Bott]

Ok...will give it a shot. Thank you.

[Heineken77]

Odd problem.

I followed the instructions to the T, used phpMyAdmin to run the queries, added and saved the templates, and edited my index.php file under forum/index.php .. however when I tried to access my site I got the following email:

Database error in vBulletin :

Link-ID == false, connect failed
mysql error: Can't connect to MySQL server on 'mysql.zeonhost.com' (110)

mysql error number: 2003

Date: Monday 15th of July 2002 04:55:58 PM
Script: http://nba2k3.net/forum/index.php
Referer:

Any ideas? I just put everything back to it's original state

Heineken

[Logician]

MYSQL error no 2003 is related to MYSQL access problems and occurs when the script can not access to MYSQL. So it can not be related to the hack. It's very likely your were just unlucky, your MYSQL server went down at the moment you installed the hack. When it's back online, IMO give it a shot again .. The hack has been tested, installed and used by many people with no problems at all..

[Heineken77]

DOH! Means I have to redo it all over again lol ... should have waited before reverting back to original state eheh

Thanks bro, great hack by the way! Look forward to installing it

[Logician]

yw, let me know if you encounter any problems again..

[dprice]

Logician,

Installed the hack and it sent the emails and PMs to the Birthday members, but the EMAILS are Blank. The subject is titled: Happy Birthday, but there isnt any messages in the PMs or emails?

[Logician]

Originally posted by dprice
Installed the hack and it sent the emails and PMs to the Birthday members, but the EMAILS are Blank. The subject is titled: Happy Birthday, but there isnt any messages in the PMs or emails?

dprice, make sure :
a) you have created the templates
b) content of that templates are not blank
c) You entered the template names exactly (no trailing space etc.)
d) Create the templates in all styles if it still does not work..

Your problem is very likely related to either of these..

[dprice]

That was the problem, thanks!

I am using a CUSTOM template and when I added the templates above, they were added in the DEFAULT templates, which I was not using.
So I merely moved them to my custom templates.

Thanks again my friend!

[tractor-beam]

Great hack! Quick question:

Can I add either the "$birthday_children[username]" or "$birthday_children[user]" to the title in the new thread, such as:

$title = "Happy Birthday " .$birthday_children[username]."!"

Thanks!

- Gerry

[Logician]

Originally posted by tractor-beam
Can I add either the "$birthday_children[username]" or "$birthday_children[user]" to the title in the new thread, such as:

$title = "Happy Birthday " .$birthday_children[username]."!"

Gerry, greeting thread is not seperate for each user. Instead one thread is created per day regardless of birthday number, so you cant use user name in thread title..