Send an alert and/or email on a member's birthday

Paul B

XenForo moderator
Staff member
OK, this is a totally pointless "feature" I agree, but it might just add a little personal touch if a member receives a "Happy Birthday" alert on their birthday :mad:

And/or an email.

A lot of forums list members' birthdays at the bottom of forum home but as we all know, XenForo is all about less is more, so this would just be a way of acknowledging those members who have gone to the effort of entering their full birth date in their profile, without bloating the forum home page.

Besides, everyone likes being wished "Happy Birthday", even if it is via an automated script :rolleyes:

Don't forget to like vote for this post if you agree 🤬
 
Upvote 156
Nice I like it :D

Wayyy back in the 2.2.9 days of vB when we last used it lol - one of our Admins wrote a cool Birthday mod that displayed a nice graphic above the forum list on index page that said Happy Birthday to the member(s) having a birthday only.... it was closeable if it annoyed them and of course only lasted for the 24hours, it was a really nice mod :)

Not sure if this shouldn't be a mod also, but I like the idea very much.
 
While that would be cool, something I have found extremely useful in getting people to comeback and participate is the email on their birthday option, which could be a PC which could initiate an email, which would show up as an unread PC when they log in.

A reasonable # of people who join our site, forget about it, but with the 1/year email tend to come back.
 
I thought of suggesting the same feature when I didn't get a b'day email from xenForo, last month. :D
(but then, totally forgot about it later)

[...] without bloating the forum home page.
I wouldn't mind displaying a compact list of those users on the homepage (along with their age, if it's not blocked by the user's privacy options). I'd prefer showing it in the sidebar, below or above the "Forum Statistics" block, as shown in the mockup:

birthday_block_sidebar.webp
 
While that would be cool, something I have found extremely useful in getting people to comeback and participate is the email on their birthday option, which could be a PC which could initiate an email, which would show up as an unread PC when they log in.

A reasonable # of people who join our site, forget about it, but with the 1/year email tend to come back.


Yeah an email is good too :) perhaps a few different birthday/anniversary options on member group.
 
It could also be added to the news feed, depending on the member's privacy settings.

So in the "Everyone's News Feed" it would show up as something like "It's Brogan's birthday today. He's 42."

Email and/or PC is also useful, I personally send both from my forum and as has been mentioned, it can prompt people into coming back to the site.

I'd prefer showing it in the sidebar, below or above the "Forum Statistics" block, as shown in the mockup:
The sidebar would be a great place for it as presumably most forums are going to have a lot of empty space there, depending on how many forums they have and which sidebar blocks they display.
 
The news feed would be quite challenging because the definition of "today" varies widely due to time zones (technically speaking, there are actually 26 hours between the farthest ahead and behind time zones). Additionally, all the birthdays would probably go out at once and fill up the news feed at that point.
 
Hmmm, good point on the feed :rolleyes:

I presume the alert/email/pc/sidebar block isn't an issue though, presuming of course you guys think it's worth implementing.
It would be great for example if there was a pre-defined birthday sidebar block which could be simply added.
 
Hi Brogan

I am not sure I need an alert for my birthday, I've had it on the same date for 45 years so I should know when it is by now.

Regards

Dereck
And I've had mine for 56, but I still like getting email in my box from the forums I am a member of wishing me a HB each year. Liz 
 
Just picking up on this one because I noticed in my forum that an established and popular member had their birthday recently, and other members being able to see this (under Today's Birthdays, vB 3.x) picked up on it and started a thread. It's a nice way of your community being friendly and I think I would really miss this if there wasn't something similar. I like the suggestion above also to have this in abbreviated form in the side bar - I would prefer this to alerts - so every member can see it.
 
Showing the birthdays at the bottom of the main forum page is a great idea. It lets people create a personal birthday message in the forum somewhere. And it's quick: the information only needs to be generated once per timezone per day.

Whenever I get some automated birthday message, I think great: another piece of useless, impersonal spam. In fact, the impersonality of it is somewhat insulting: it implies that I'm not worthy of a personal touch. It's the same reason why most people would prefer to talk to a human on the phone.
 
So an automated script which displays members' birthdays at the bottom of the forum home page isn't impersonal, yet an automated email is?

I'm struggling to see the difference or logic with that viewpoint.
 
I've had a lot of members who go inactive come back and start participating in the community again just because they got an Email wishing them a Happy Birthday. This is a wonderful feature to have!
 
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