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

[Paul B]

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

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

Don't forget to like vote for this post if you agree

 

[Biker]

When we were still running vB, we ran into an issue with birthday notices being sent out on accounts that were no longer active and hadn't been for a few years.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.

 

[Paul B]

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.

 

[Grover]

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

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:



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:



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


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



... 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:



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?

 

[420]

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?

 

[Ozzy47]

No, there is no birthday alert/email addon for XF2, but there is a birthday thread addon,

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

 

[420]

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.

 

[mjda]

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).

 

[wedgar]

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).

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.

 

[egerci]

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,

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

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).

You might like this add-on, it is not new. I use it and it works

https://xenforo.com/community/resources/birthday-email.7066/

 

[mjda]

You might like this add-on, it is not new. I use it and it works

I've written an add-on that will do this on my sites already. I was just showing my support for getting it added into the core.

 

[Mouth]

I've written an add-on that will do this on my sites already

Share it?

 

[mjda]

Share it?

It's not really release ready. It's mostly hard-coded with timings and uses no phrases.

 

[beerForo]

On vBulletin I got lots of thank yous to the bday email, and I also liked that it was good to wake up inactive members, in a nice way.

 

[⭐ Alex ⭐]

Don't forget to like this post if you agree

I agree, but I also up-voted instead .

 

[DigNap15]

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!"

 

[beerForo]

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!"

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!

 

[btmgreg]

I've never seen Brogan use so many happy emoticons in one post. It's quite unsettling.

 

[Paul B]

No idea what you mean ...




(that's a whistle, not a kiss ...)

 

[btmgreg]

No idea what you mean ...




(that's a whistle, not a kiss ...)

What a difference 13 years make

 

[⭐ Alex ⭐]

Someone should make you an addon to put you out of your misery. Waiting 13 years for a small feature!!!!