Profile Enhancements - Birthday Thread and PM generator

<a href="http://www.AusPhotography.net.au" target="_blank">www.AusPhotography.net.au</a> Birthday Thread and PM generator

This product provides a simple way to create both an automatic Birthday greeting thread and forum member birthday PM.

Features:

1. Configurable greeting text with name, age (optional), and birthday
2. Excludable usergroups (eg. banned etc)
3. Creates a thread in selectable forum and sends a PM from selected user (admin or other)
4. Runs as a vBulletin scheduled task (vB cron job)
5. Honours forum members birthday profile settings
6. Only sends birthdays for members with recent forum activity (configurable)
7. Adjusts for forum members time-zone so the greeting will be on their birthday

Uses:

1. Creates a Database table to track birthday processed
2. One additional file vBulletin scheduled task (vB cron job)
3. Product installation file

Installation:

1. Copy ap_birthday.php to the forum ./includes/cron directory
2. Install the product file
3. Configure it via AdminCP/Settings/Options
4. Disable the vBulletin birthday emailer in AdminCP / Scheduled tasks
Done!

Enjoy! It will probably work on vB3.6+ as well.

Update 2013-04-12: Working with 4.2.0
Update 1.1.2 if zero active post use 'lastactivity' instead (bugfix)

Kym

[BadgerDog]

Originally Posted by snoopytas

It works for us and other sites.
There is no reason it should just stop working.

Check that the cron job is working.

What changed on you site?
Remember it is based on forum activity.

What settings did you have?

Hi ..

Not sure why ...

As an example, had a member's birthday today. He had 3 posts and joined in the last week. He has his birthday options set to display on and the cron job is running.

No thread created or PM sent ... it was the 3rd example in the last week.

Anyway, no big deal and thanks for providing something other than Valter's which seems to run fine for us, which we had been using before.

Regards,
Doug

[AusPhotography]

A non obvious reason could be how he has his birthday display setting

I.e. it honours the vB: Edit Profile / Date of Birth: / privacy setting.

Ie. showbirthday > '1' in the code.

[BadgerDog]

Originally Posted by snoopytas

A non obvious reason could be how he has his birthday display setting

I.e. it honours the vB: Edit Profile / Date of Birth: / privacy setting.

Ie. showbirthday > '1' in the code.

His setting in his user record indicates that it was ok to show "day and month of birth" publicly.

Should that have worked?

Regards,
Doug

[AusPhotography]

Yes, that should have worked and does on our site.

[Successfulsteps]

I installed this on 4.1.4 today and can't wait for someone's birthday to see it work!!

Do you have to disable the email too though? Or is there some reason that both can't work at the same time?

[AusPhotography]

Originally Posted by BadgerDog

His setting in his user record indicates that it was ok to show "day and month of birth" publicly.

Should that have worked?

Regards,
Doug

Yes that should work.

I just re-checked the SQL code in various scenarios - it works.
Without actually seeing the specific case I cannot determine why it appears not to work for you.

We have been using this mod for over a year ourselves - well before I productised it.

Thanks for the feedback.

[AusPhotography]

Originally Posted by Successfulsteps

I installed this on 4.1.4 today and can't wait for someone's birthday to see it work!!

Do you have to disable the email too though? Or is there some reason that both can't work at the same time?

They can both work! Either a post or a PM or both. We use both.

[Successfulsteps]

Originally Posted by snoopytas

They can both work! Either a post or a PM or both. We use both.

No, what I mean is that the instructions say to disable the email birthday one. I want to know if I can have the post, PM AND email; or if I have to disable to the email to insure the mod works correctly.

[AusPhotography]

The email is created by the vB standard scheduled job .
You do not have to disable it, I suggested that to avoid confusion.

This mod does not generate an email other than by side effect of the PM.

[Successfulsteps]

Originally Posted by snoopytas

The email is created by the vB standard scheduled job .
You do not have to disable it, I suggested that to avoid confusion.

This mod does not generate an email other than by side effect of the PM.

Thanks for the clarification. I wanted to keep the email birthday just because you get some members who are not active, have not posted; and any chance to send them something is great! At the same time though, I don't want to post or send the PM to them. So, your answer is helpful so I can keep that email as well without conflicts.