[admin (no pm's please)]

Please to announce that this has at least been started.

The first step will be to allow people to enter dates via a dropdown system.

[Viper]

Good stuff. Will it be released in time for my birthday, July 20th?

[1-18-08]

Cool. I look forward to this.

[admin (no pm's please)]

I'm a bit hesitant on time scales, but it is time to push the forums development onward at a bit of a faster pace, though if you really look at it even over the last few weeks, there have been a few additions.
I'd bet more additions than most competing systems, and the last few weeks has been our slowest rate of development in terms of what we offer.
But then again, it has not been a vacation here, with the development of the t-shirt site, we have hopefully added another little income stream, kitting out the office with new PCs was also hardly gratuitous, hopefully they will help us run trouble free for a few years, and in peace and quiet as they are pretty silent bits of kit. Plus of course the new server....

[Nick(NR)]

[Ziddy1232]

[1-18-08]

[Symon]

IMHO i see no point to this, you have a profile where you add you D.O.B its another extra that people insist on thinking it will mean more membes

[admin (no pm's please)]

Showing peoples birthdays is a bit of fun though.

[Symon]

[admin (no pm's please)]

It will be a change to XPROFILE to allow you specify an XPROFILE field is a date type, which will then be entered in a nicer date dialog, having got explicit dates in fields, it becomes easier to write a portal component.

[Symon]

[CodyT07]

[Symon]

[admin (no pm's please)]

Same here!

[admin (no pm's please)]

Well a date profile field appears after a fashion now.

So a little progress is being made...

[admin (no pm's please)]

Ok, we have installed the date xprofile type, where if you put:

type=date

against a field you can enter a date.

If there are no bugs reported against this, the next step will be the long awaited birthday hack.

[archers-rest]

Is it ready yet, the suspense is killing me

[admin (no pm's please)]

Not yet, I was hoping a few people would say they had successfully got the birthday fields in first.

[archers-rest]

[admin (no pm's please)]

You'll need to search on XPROFILE.

The birthday hack field will have to be called [BIRTHDAY]

[archers-rest]

Done that and its working fine, but it doesnt seem to want a specific format when entering dates - in fact i could write anything in there

[admin (no pm's please)]

Have you got "type=date" in there?

[archers-rest]

Have now

When i view my profile though it shows this

My Birthday: 16 January 197616/1/1976

[admin (no pm's please)]

Have you re-entered the date again though?

[archers-rest]

Yes I re entered the date after changing xprofile, another members shows this

My Birthday: 20 June 198020/6/1980

and another....

My Birthday: 6 November 19686/11/1968

[admin (no pm's please)]

How is it now?

[archers-rest]

Sorted thanks , so back to my original question then how soon can we expect this

[admin (no pm's please)]

A hack like this requires some careful consideration, not only for the sake of the specific hack itself, but as it will be the model of future hacks.

Specifically hacks will need to "cache". It is not sensible for each time someone goes to the index page of a forum for 2000 members birthdays to be checked!

So the timescale is the time it takes for me to be happy with the design plus the time taken to do it

[davecov]

Thanks for the work done so far, I have included the XPROFILE birthday field and it works fine. There is one slight problem - if somebody changes any other field in their profile, and they haven't set a birthdate, their birthday is set to 1 January 2006. Any chance of including blank fields as the top line of the drop-down box so that this will not happen? It will also enable those fussy about divulging their age to leave the year blank!

I appreciate that you are very busy on more important things, but should you get a teensy-weensy moment free....!

Thanks

Dave

[admin (no pm's please)]

Does it work for you now?

[davecov]

Wow, that was quick!

The blank fields do show at the top of the drop-down boxes but the default still appears as 1 January 2006. Any way of making the blank fields the default instead? If so, that would be great, if not then it's no big deal to go up one notch in each box.

Thanks

Dave

[EDIT - they work fine now! Thanks a lot, admin!]

[admin (no pm's please)]

Once a profile is updated the 2006 date would have been set. I think users who have not updated the profile yet will see blank defaults.

[davecov]

Yes, I just discovered that by using another id to test with.

Thanks again.

Dave

[caden3]

i cant wait till this is done i really need to finish my site and clean up

[1-18-08]

Okay, i have added

[admin (no pm's please)]

For XPROFILE you really can't expect us to repeat all the instructions for XPROFILE fields under each and every mention of them.

[maryccc]

The BIRTHDAY code is great thank you. When will we see the birthday at the bottom showing birthdays coming up?

[admin (no pm's please)]

Still not sure I'm afraid, it is dreadfully important that this is done right. It comes down to finding an hour or twos clear thinking time!

[admin (no pm's please)]

Okay then, the thinking cap has been and and I have come up with what will be a simple caching solution easily implemented on all portal components.

e.g. for many components like say the sticky articles list on the left of this forum it really does not matter if the list gets generated each time someone accesses the forum, or every few minutes. Something like the birthday hack may live quite happily even with a 24 hour update time, just so long as it can be tweaked to update at midnight.

So this solution will not only do the birthday hack, but speed up the portal for all forums and allow other highly database intensive components to be written.

[admin (no pm's please)]

All the old portal components have now been rewritten to take advantage of a new caching system, that's both good and bad news. It does mean it needs to be a Saturday release for the birthday hack, this Saturday is out, next Saturday is the 23rd with Christmas on top of us.

So I think the plot may well be to write the birthday hack and maybe one or two more hacks that use this system and go for a new year release.

[admin (no pm's please)]

This is a conundrum

The birthday hack is working in the office

But the points in the post above remain valid

[archers-rest]

I'm happy with that, cant wait for the birthday hack ..............BUT could it please be in by Jan 16th .........pretty please

[toni470]

we would love a birthday hack!!
npgunderground.myfreeforum.org

but just month and date.. some ppl are age sensitive/secretive


- Toni

[sumatra]

I HAVE BEEN away for three week and two days, nice addition i just implemented it, it worked fine, but I was hoping to it would also appear at the front of the forum so we can see when members have their birthdays or is this going to be automatically appearing some place

[archers-rest]

[Dean]

Thanks for all the instructions on the Birthday hack!

I got it setup on our site, but there is one minor problem. When I went to test it on my acct and another admin's... the database grabbed the dates (I set them for tomorrow... and then changed the timezone to test it). When I set our Birthdays back to blank (or any other dates), the database would not let go of the dates... it keeps displaying them. So, our birthdays will be tomorrow.

I have tried different templates and such, but, it appears that these birthdays (once they arrived) were grabbed by the database and displayed... but, they are now in the database and won't come back out. At least this is my current "theory" on what is going on... cuz it is the same for all templates I tried. So, it's not in the individual templates. Is there a file that has these dates in them, that I can go edit?

I set my Birthday to Jan 15th, to see if it will show up on Monday. If it does, then I will have THREE Birthdays! I can't afford to age that quickly! Please HELP!

[CodyT07]

Link to your forum please.
EDIT: http://magicbus.myfreeforum.org/ is the link you can view when you reply, as his signiture doesnt show..

[Symon]

[Dean]

oh... my reply is gone.

One other thing... minor, but I was wondering.

At the bottom of the index page...

With Registered Users it looks like this -> Registered Users:

But with Birthdays it looks like this -> Birthdays :

Could it look like this instead? -> Birthdays:

Thanks.

[Dean]

Any workaround for this?

After all... it IS my Birthday today! So, you should give me a Birthday present and fix this problem!

J/K!

Here's a B-Day present. Just fix it so it says Birthdays: at the bottom of the screen, instead of Birthdays :

It would look a LOT neater that way!

Happy Birthday to me... Happy Birthday to me...

And... yah... my Birthday is tomorrow as well!

[Dean]

OK... I found that it displays me as having a Birthday on Jan 14th & Jan 15th (I changed the Timezone). I set my Birthday to Jan 16th and clicked on Submit then set it back to the real date of Jan 3rd. I want to see if when a member clicks on Submit after editing their Profile, if the Birthday date will get put into some database file, and from this database file, their usernames will populate the "Birthday :" field at the bottom of the screen.

I am trying to figure out how this works. Does the database only grab the dates from the Profile once the day arrives? And, then where does it store this info?

Do you'all know?

The reason I am concerned about this is cuz I have another Date option to fill in right below the Birthday option in the members' Profiles. Because of this, it is easy to screw up and put in the wrong date for the Birthday. I hope my name does not show up in the "Birthday :" field on Jan 16th. If it doesn't then there won't be a problem, really. Until 2008, at least! If some file in the database retains the three dates I have tried, then I will have three Birthdays next January.

[admin (no pm's please)]

The reported birthdays only get updated once a day.

[Dean]

They get updated meaning what? How does it work? Does it just grab the dates from the Profiles when the day arrives? It must put them in some storage then... but where? I guess on Jan 16th I will find out if hitting Submit put that date somewhere.

[Dean]

Well, I just set my Timezone for tomorrow, and it did NOT show my name on the Birthday : field. Which leads me to believe that a member can enter dates all they want, and click Submit in their Profiles. It does not matter. All that happens is when the date arrives for the member, the Birthday in the Profile is pulled into some file or something, and displays. After that, even if you change the date in the Profile, it won't give up the date in that file (or that part of the database). It keeps displaying the Username in the Birthday : field.

My only concern now, is will it keep that date (or dates) and display them next year? Cuz, even though I changed my Birthday back to the correct one (Jan 3rd), I was showing up on both Jan 14th and Jan 15th. Just by changing the Timezone in my profile I could see that I was recorded by the software to have a Birthday on BOTH days (simultaneously). So, it must store these in the database and not let go of them. So, next year will I have 3 Birthdays?

One thing I can check, is tomorrow morning, I can change my Timezone back to yesterday, and see if I still show up in the Birthday : field. If not, then the database releases that info once the day is gone. I will report my findings tomorrow.

[Dean]

[admin (no pm's please)]

fixed, but remember things will have been cached.

[Dean]

Great! Thanks so much.

BTW... when will it show this change?

[Dean]

OK.

It is now showing Birthdays:

Thank you so much!

[Nick(NR)]

I don't want to be a pain, but I'm working this into an actual portal component?

As it's only updated once a day it makes it a little hard to work out if it works?

The title color is off as well which is weird because I haven't changed anything from an empty base template apart from the code used for the title in the component which is {BIRTHDAY_TITLE}

Options Tab is:
[BIRTHDAY]
title=Todays Birthdays

Link in Sig

[Brandon]

[Nick(NR)]

[Brandon]

Oh, no clue then

[jacquieh]

Please would you clarify what needs to go in the options tab and in the index_body.tpl files to get the birthdays to come up. And when it gets updated.

I set my title to "Happy Birthday to" but it's put "Todays Birthdays" instead.

I have put it in http://craftythreadsnyarns.myfreeforum.org

ETA update: As soon as it turned midnight it did what I was hoping it would

[admin (no pm's please)]

It updates daily. Which might explain delay in you seeing the text you want.

[jacquieh]

It's looking good, thanks!

[jacquieh]

We have the birthday field in our profile Ok but it only works with the one style template I have added it to which is OK.

But if I change to a different style that doesn't have the birthday field and then back again to one that does the values for those fields are lost.

Would it be possible for that data to stay in the database even if the user changes style so it could be picked up for the birthday list on the index page so others will be able to see there is a birthday even if the birthday person can't see it themselves.

[admin (no pm's please)]

I think you have picked up on an important bug there, thanks

I believe it is now fixed.

[jacquieh]

Yes it's working how I would have hoped now Thanks!

[sonny-skill]

Ok you've lost my on page 2. I think it's best if you write it all in step by step form for everyone to it properly, not with posts all over the place and people interupting progress with their errors

[admin (no pm's please)]

And have you looked on HOWTODOIT?

[Symon]

[Nick(NR)]

I wonder how many times you have to post the link to it before people actually look

[Tank0]

well to be honoust i have been searching for it on howtodoit (searched "birthday") too but it isn't in the hacks list .

the birthday field works perfectly but i tried to install it in my index and as a portal component like Nick(Nr) mentionned but i can't get it to work .

could you please link me to the correct page on howtodoit ?

[Nick(NR)]

The birthday hack, does not work as a portal component, I was trying to make it one, which if you had read properly had failed, I'd like to think admin can make it so, in a similar way to how the visits works, as a portal or in the who is online section.

[admin (no pm's please)]

Which bit does not work? Bit confused there as:

{MYFF.BIRTHDAY} which displays things is a portal component, e.g. the only way the birthday hack works is as a portal.

[Nick(NR)]

visits -

left alone - shows the results in a portal component manner.

altered code - it can appear in a line, in the who is online part.

[davecov]

I have been notified by an under-18 member of my forum that an adult member had visited his house to deliver a package. His parents were not very happy at all and I cannot blame them. However, it was the fault of the lad in giving his address out by PM to the adult. There was nothing sinister in this event as it turned out and was totally innocent, however it has raised some issues. One of which is the Birthday Hack.

Although this event was not directly the result of the Birthday Hack, I am now conscious of the fact that a lot of the younger members are displaying their age openly on the forum. I thought about not letting them display their ages if under 18 but that could highlight that they are under 18.

The best thing would be to have a shortened format of BIRTHDAY that just shows the day and month. Is there any chance that you could create one? That way nobody is any the wiser of our ages. I've tried setting the year to blank but that blanks all three fields.

If it is not possible, then I'll just have to remove the BIRTHDAY from viewtopic_body.tpl.

Dave

[admin (no pm's please)]

It is certainly not possible at the moment, and we have quite a TODO list we are working on currently, so cannot address this in the short term.

[davecov]

No probs. I'll just remove the birthdays from public viewing.

Thanks

Dave

[Tank0]

sorry for the late reply but i waited 'till it appeared in the howtodoit forum before i made another stupid mistake .

[admin (no pm's please)]

I bet is is a ' bug. Do you have:

Today's Birthdays:

in which case the ' may cause a problem.

The good news is that this issue is due for a major fix very soon. Meanwhile as this is cached daily, you may need to remove MYFF.BIRTHDAY.

[Tank0]

thought that too so i changed it to today s birthdays instead but no result

[admin (no pm's please)]

As stated it is cached until tomorrow.

[Tank0]

thx i have reinserted the myff.birthday in the portalview until tomorrow to see if that has solved it . will keep you informed