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

P

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 159
When we were still running vB, we ran into an issue with birthday notices being sent out on accounts that were no longer active and hadn't been for a few years. The resulting bounced emails caused some issues with blacklisting which took me some time to get cleared.

Notices? Sure. Emails? No way.
 
Emails wouldn't be sent to accounts which have the 'Email invalid (bounced)' state.

It could also be configured to only apply to members active in the last 6 months, which is how some other functions in XF already work.
 
Brogan said:
OK, this is a totally pointless "feature" I agree...

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 :)
Click to expand...

I am a bit surprised/puzzled that this valuable social feature has not been offered yet after so many years. It is not a totally pointless feature at all ;)...


I can't remember how other forum packages used to do this, but Facebook for example offers it like this:

FB birthday indicator friends list homepage.webp

A birthday symbol next to a friends username in your contacts list on the homepage. So, never to be missed.

When you mouse-over the username a membercard pops up and it says inside the membercard: 'Write a birthday message to <username>'. When you click on that sentence, you are brought to the profile of that user and there you can enter your 'spontaneous' message.


Also, the birthdays are shown in a dedicated area on the homepage:

FB birthday section homepage.webp

(Oddly with a different birthday icon. So much for consistency!)


And when you click the Events options, they are listed there as well:

FB birthday section Events.webp

... with the option of directly posting your wishes on their profile/timeline as well. And underneath the area in this screenshot you are served with a list (avatars) of all your friends that have upcoming birthdays.


Furthermore... there are notifications as well:

FB facebook-birthday-notification.webp

I mean... the list (options) goes on and on it seems nowadays on Facebook. Facebook has seriously upped their game in recent years when it comes to the easy of use and social factor of the platform. Is there any good reason why birthday functionality would not be offered by a forum software that has the aim of building communities?
 
Last edited:
Is this going to be a feature?

If not, is there an add on for it?

This is a necessary feature for any social networking website.

At 104 likes, I'm surprised this is not a feature by now, is there a reason?
 
No, there is no birthday alert/email addon for XF2, but there is a birthday thread addon,
xenforo.com

Birthday thread [Paid]

AndyB submitted a new resource: Birthday thread - Automatically creates birthday threads for your members. Premium upgrade: This XF2 add-on along with the entire collection can be purchased for $25.00 USD. Your Premium upgrade will allow you to download as many XF2 add-ons as you like for one...
xenforo.com xenforo.com
 
Thank you, already installed that one, but it doesn't send emails, only an XF Alert.

Maybe Andy can add email notifications to his add on, I'll try that route.

The idea is to send the member some love and hopefully bring them back, if they've been away.

It was a standard feature of VBulletin that we all miss dearly.
 
After 10 years I'm surprised to see this one still not implemented. I can see how some folks might not think it's needed, but I can't tell you how many forums I forgot I was even registered at until I received the happy birthday email from them. I'd say it's pretty useful for getting folks to at least think about the forums again.

I'd also recommend, if this eventually does get implemented, only sending it to users who have been active since their previous birthday (a year ago).
 
mjda said:
After 10 years I'm surprised to see this one still not implemented. I can see how some folks might not think it's needed, but I can't tell you how many forums I forgot I was even registered at until I received the happy birthday email from them. I'd say it's pretty useful for getting folks to at least think about the forums again.

I'd also recommend, if this eventually does get implemented, only sending it to users who have been active since their previous birthday (a year ago).
Click to expand...
I'd like see the activity date as a setting the forum owner can modify. This might be a good way to entice people that haven't been active for several years to sign back in and perhaps become more active.
 
420 said:
Is this going to be a feature?

If not, is there an add on for it?

This is a necessary feature for any social networking website.

At 104 likes, I'm surprised this is not a feature by now, is there a reason?
Click to expand...

Ozzy47 said:
No, there is no birthday alert/email addon for XF2, but there is a birthday thread addon,
xenforo.com

Birthday thread [Paid]

AndyB submitted a new resource: Birthday thread - Automatically creates birthday threads for your members. Premium upgrade: This XF2 add-on along with the entire collection can be purchased for $25.00 USD. Your Premium upgrade will allow you to download as many XF2 add-ons as you like for one...
xenforo.com xenforo.com
Click to expand...

420 said:
Thank you, already installed that one, but it doesn't send emails, only an XF Alert.

Maybe Andy can add email notifications to his add on, I'll try that route.

The idea is to send the member some love and hopefully bring them back, if they've been away.

It was a standard feature of VBulletin that we all miss dearly.
Click to expand...

mjda said:
After 10 years I'm surprised to see this one still not implemented. I can see how some folks might not think it's needed, but I can't tell you how many forums I forgot I was even registered at until I received the happy birthday email from them. I'd say it's pretty useful for getting folks to at least think about the forums again.

I'd also recommend, if this eventually does get implemented, only sending it to users who have been active since their previous birthday (a year ago).
Click to expand...
You might like this add-on, it is not new. I use it and it works

https://xenforo.com/community/resources/birthday-email.7066/
 
Rather than birthday messages (only about 10% of my members enter their brithdays)
How about their anniversary of joinging the forum

"Hey you joined our forum on this day, thanks for your support!"
 
DigNap15 said:
Rather than birthday messages (only about 10% of my members enter their brithdays)
How about their anniversary of joinging the forum

"Hey you joined our forum on this day, thanks for your support!"
Click to expand...
You could set this up as a trophy.
"User has been registered for at least X days: 365"
But it would be an alert.
I just realized "User's birthday is today" is a trophy too. Cool!
 

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