Zodiac Sign in the Postbit & elsewhere

Credits
- Alan @ CIT for developing this mod initally
- This thread for requesting this concept.

What does this do?
If the user has their birthday set then this will display their Zodiac Sign on the postbit & memberinfo.

Installation
Install the attached Product XML as normal, then add the following to the Postbit template AND the Memberinfo template (if you want it to appear there).

<if condition="$show['zodiacsign']">
<div class="smallfont">$zodiacsign</div>
</if>

You can put this anywhere you like in the Postbit template. The users zodiac sign will be displayed whereever you put it.

Options
This mod comes with 2 options. They can be found in vBulletin Options, under Zodiac Signs.

The first one turns displaying of the zodiac sign on and off, and the second one adds a prefix of "Zodiac Sign: " to the users sign.

Changelog
Version 1.2: Fixed a typo in a phrase name
Version 1.1: Fixed a bug and added profile support
Version 1.0: Initial Release

As usual, any comments / suggestions / questions / complaints, please let me know

On-going Development
- Chinese Zodiac
- Basic versus Advanced style Babylonian Zodiac Sun Sign
- Babylonian Zodiac Moon Sign
- Babylonian Zodiac Ascendant Sign
[I]Update: Tinkering along slowly. New goal: March 1st./I]

[tippen]

Originally Posted by silurius

Excellent. I will click Install even though I can't use it in its current form.

The minimum I'd need to use would be the option to specify either sun sign or ascendant or both. Some of my members would also want to see Chinese horoscope and other systems as well but the sun/ascendant option would be a great start for me. And images, of course.

Ditto. It would be nice for it to be expanded to include Sun, Ascendant, Moon, & Chineese Zodiac.

[Alan @ CIT]

Version 1.2 has been released which fixes a bug in the phrase "sagittarious", causing it not to appear.

Sorry, but I'm afraid I won't be adding other zodiac elements to this mod, such as Sun / Moon, or the Chineese Zodiac.

Thanks,
Alan.

[silurius]

Originally Posted by Alan @ CIT

Sorry, but I'm afraid I won't be adding other zodiac elements to this mod, such as Sun / Moon, or the Chineese Zodiac.

Understandable given the complexity. What about faking it with custom user fields? I already have the fields so how would you suggest I edit the postbit?

[tippen]

Possible Bug!
(I thought that I posted this earlier, but it seems not)

A user on my forums has the birthdate "November 25, 1988" set, and it shows up perfectly in memberinfo. The problem is that her zodiac sign in postbit has no value (ie. it is simply blank).

I think that this may be a problem with the code.


Re: Chinese Zodiac
See this... http://www.china-on-site.com/flexphpsite/downloads.html
They have a Chinese zodiac script that converts the Gergorian date into the Chineese one.

Re: Accuracy of Current Script
I am also trying to find a more accurate zodiac script that accounts for the variation in the periods of the signs, due to the length of one year's accordance with solar revolutions. I.e. Dec 23, 1989 should be Capricorn; while Dec 23, 1985 should be Saggitarius (I thinkth).

No offense to the author.

[Flow Fusion]

:ninja:

[Mastar]

Instructions for this suck! I quit!

[Alan @ CIT]

Master: There are only 2 things needed to install, 1) Install the product XML, 2) make the template edit - which of those 2 "suck" ?

Flow: Many thanks for the PSD mate, I'll take a look at integrating them next week.

Tippen: Thanks for the bug report, I'll look into it next week Also, if you can find me some info on the variations you mentioned, I'll adjust this script to work with them. My knowledge of the zodiac is zero, so when creating it I just copied the Signs / Dates out of the horoscope section of the newspaper

[Mastar]

well I install the product and placed the coding in my 2 templates in the contact info (memberinfo) and before my thanks hack in the postbit and nothing.

[tippen]

Originally Posted by Alan @ CIT

Also, if you can find me some info on the variations you mentioned, I'll adjust this script to work with them. My knowledge of the zodiac is zero, so when creating it I just copied the Signs / Dates out of the horoscope section of the newspaper

The problem only comes in with people born on the Cusps, like me. The Cusps are when the borders of two signs meet, ie. December 23rd is right between Sagitarius & Capricorn. Futhermore, a person cannot be born "just on the Cusp", because they are always in either the preceeding or succeeding sign. The only way to determine exactly which they were born on is by knowing the exact time & place of birth, and comparing the exact position of the Earth with the exact position of the constellations. www.astro.com does this. I don't believe that such functionality would be easy to emulate.

Maybe an override option would be handy: so that persons born on a different side of the cusp could override the script's guess. I'm not sure though, as a lot of users probably would be confused by the description text for such an option.
Alternatively, it could be made an Admin Feature, but that becomes an annoying amount of work for admins, at times.

*shrugs*

The Chineese zodiac is sooo much easier.

[edit] I suppose that they could be labeled Sagitarius-Capricorn Cusps, etc. But then you would also have to break every sign into the recognized three periods: each week of each sign is considered a period. In this fashion, each sign has three periods, plus a cusp; ie. LeoI, LeoII, LeoIII, Leo-Vigro Cusp. This is a much more accurate way of looking at the zodiac, because LeoIs are almost completely different from Leo-Virgo Cusps. A great resource for generally-accurate dates is: http://www.lesfemmescafe.com/horoscopeprofile.html

I am working on the code that would determine sign & period (incl. cusps), as I mentioned. I'll post it here for your use -- if you'd like -- when I am done.

[akanevsky]

Nice hack and what's important, nice coding style too, bro
Installed.