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.

[ChurchMedia]

Great idea. You can also use \n for line breaks. I'm going to post a new version of the b-day hack today and I'll change the HTML to BB code. Thanks!

[ChurchMedia]

Version 2.0 has just been released. Bug fixes, new features and update instructions are in the first post.

Enjoy,

[NuclioN]

Works great so far Churchmedia Tnx

[SnowBot]

Going to install NOW!!!

[jluerken]

Thanks man for version 2. I installed it two minutes ago and get a DB error when running it.

Database error in vBulletin 3.0.3:

Invalid SQL:
INSERT INTO vb3_thread(title, lastpost, forumid, open, replycount, postusername, postuserid, lastposter, dateline,iconid, visible)
VALUES
('Happy Birthday to billyjobob, m4|Ranger, XeDa101, on August 28, 2004', 1093680294, 15,
1, 0, 'CFN|BirthdayBot', ,
'CFN|BirthdayBot', 1093680294, 0, 1)
mysql error: You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '
'CFN|BirthdayBot', 1093680294, 0, 1)' at line 4

mysql error number: 1064

Can you help?

[ChurchMedia]

Check your variables. The $greeter variable should be a number -- the user ID for CFN|BirthdayBot. Check that and if you still have problems, post the lines with \\change me in them.

EDIT: Actually, it looks like there is no user ID there. Again, make sure the $greeter variable has the correct user ID for the greeter name.

[jluerken]

I wrote greeter1 instead of greeter=1 but now I have a new error which is really one

Database error in vBulletin 3.0.3:

Invalid SQL: UPDATE user SET posts=posts+1 WHERE userid=4
mysql error: Table 'usr_web1_3.user' doesn't exist

mysql error number: 1146

Means you've once forgotten to check for table prefixes in this line
UPDATE user SET posts=posts+1 WHERE userid=4
Can you update this and tell me what to change?

[jluerken]

Ok I've done it already.

Pls. change this part of your hack

PHP Code:

// Updating User's Post
$DB_site->query("UPDATE user SET posts=posts+1 WHERE userid=$greeter"); 


with this

PHP Code:

// Updating User's Post
$DB_site->query("UPDATE " . TABLE_PREFIX . "user SET posts=posts+1 WHERE userid=$greeter"); 


[HiDeo]

Nice hack

Thanks

[ChurchMedia]

Fixed it! Sorry about that!