Vereins-Geburtstage

Vereins-Geburtstage manages your members' birthdays and sends personal birthday greetings by email, automatically or at the push of a button. It is designed for clubs and associations and is fully bilingual (English and German). Members are imported from a CSV file or added manually. On re-import, an existing entry with the same email address is updated, so no duplicates are created. Every morning at 9:00 a.m. the plugin checks whether anyone has a birthday and, only then, sends a summary email to the configured address with the names and a link to the admin area. There you can see today's birthdays, a preview of the upcoming birthdays in the next seven days, and send the greetings with one click. Optionally, the plugin sends them fully automatically. For the texts you can define any number of templates with the placeholders {vorname} (first name), {nachname} (last name), {absender} (sender) and {alter} (age). One template is chosen at random per person so the greetings stay varied. You can also define separate templates for special birthdays: enter an age (for example 50, 60 or 75) and, when a person reaches exactly that age, a matching template is used instead. Special birthdays are marked with a star in the overview, the preview and the morning summary – even for people without an email address. Both the overview and the people list show for whom a greeting has already been sent in the current year. The people list can be sorted by first name, last name, birthday or email by clicking the column headers. Before relying on a template, you can send yourself a test email with sample data at the push of a button. Every send – manual, automatic or test – is recorded in a sending log, and the people list can be exported back to CSV at any time. The plugin is privacy-friendly: only the imported data is stored in your own database, and no external services are used. Features

• CSV import (first name, last name, birthday, email) with automatic delimiter and date detection
• Manual adding of individual people
• Daily summary at 9:00 a.m. – only when at least one birthday is due
• Sending manually by button or fully automatic
• Any number of templates with placeholders, chosen at random per person
• Special-birthday templates for milestone ages (e.g. 50, 60, 75), marked with a star
• Configurable closing/signature appended automatically to every email
• Import and export of all templates as a JSON file
• Test-email button per template, sent to a chosen address with sample data
• Sending log (last 500 entries) with timestamp, recipient, template and result
• CSV export of the people list, re-importable in the same format
• Configurable advance warning (in days) for milestone birthdays, shown in the overview and as a one-time note in the daily summary
• Marking of greetings already sent
• Preview of birthdays in the next 7 days
• Sortable people list
• Whole list deletable (with confirmation)
• Built-in help, bilingual EN/DE

1. Upload the plugin ZIP under "Plugins -> Add New -> Upload Plugin" and activate it.
2. In the "Geburtstage" (Birthdays) menu, import a CSV file.
3. Add your own texts under "Templates".
4. Configure the sender and, if desired, fully automatic sending under "Settings".
5. The built-in guide is available at any time on the "Help" tab.

Note: For precise triggering at 9:00 a.m., a real server cron job calling wp-cron.php is recommended. For reliable email delivery, an SMTP plugin (e.g. WP Mail SMTP) is recommended.

1.9.1

• New: configurable advance warning (in days, default 14) for milestone birthdays. Once within the warning window, they appear in the overview ahead of the regular 7-day preview, and trigger a one-time note in the daily summary email on the day the warning period begins – even on days with no other birthdays.

1.9.0

• New: "Send test email" button per template (normal and special) — sends the rendered email with sample data and the configured closing/signature to a chosen address, without affecting the "already sent" status.
• New: sending log on a new "Log" tab, recording every manual, automatic and test send with timestamp, recipient, template, type and result; the log can be cleared.
• New: CSV export of the people list (with and without email) in the same format as the import, so it can be re-imported directly.

1.8.3

• Fixed: HTML entities (e.g. ") appeared in the email subject and body when the site name or sender name contained quotes or ampersands. All text is now decoded properly for plain-text emails.

1.8.2

• Fixed: the daily 9:00 a.m. job could stop being scheduled after a plugin update; it is now re-scheduled automatically if missing.
• Scheduling now uses the WordPress time zone correctly (previously it could be off on servers not running in UTC).
• New status panel on the overview tab showing the next scheduled run, the last run, whether WP-Cron is disabled, and the site time zone.
• New button to run the daily job manually (useful for testing or if the cron did not fire).

1.8.1

• Fixed: only a single contact without an email address could be stored. A UNIQUE index on the email column left over from earlier versions rejected every further row with an empty email. The index is now reliably detected and removed on update.
• Failed database writes during import are no longer counted as successful.

1.8.0

• Import and export of all templates (standard and special) as a JSON file – for backups or to load new templates as a block.
• New configurable closing/signature in the settings that is automatically appended to every birthday email.
• {alter} (age) placeholder can be used in templates and in the signature.

1.7.1

• Automatic migration of templates and settings stored under earlier option names, so data is no longer lost after updating from older versions.

1.7.0

• Templates for special birthdays: define your own subject and text for specific ages (e.g. 50, 60, 75).
• When a person reaches a defined age on their birthday, a template for that age is chosen at random; otherwise a standard template is used. People without a known birth year always receive a standard template.
• Special birthdays are marked with a ★ in the overview, the 7-day preview and the morning summary – including for people without an email address.
• New placeholder {alter} (age) available in templates.

1.6.0

• Contacts without an email address can now be imported and added manually (email is no longer required).
• People without an email are listed on a separate "Without email" tab.
• The morning summary now lists people with an email first (who receive a mail), followed by people without an email (for information only, including age).
• Automatic and manual sending still only send to people with an email address.
• Duplicate detection improved: matched by email, otherwise by first name, last name and birth date; adding an email later merges the existing entry.

1.5.0

• Loading of translations is now handled automatically (removed the manual textdomain call).
• Inline admin script is now registered through the WordPress script API.
• readme fully translated to English.
• No changes to features or behaviour.

1.4.0

• Code quality and security hardening for the WordPress.org Plugin Directory.
• All output is now properly escaped; database queries reviewed and secured.
• CSV import now uses the WordPress filesystem API instead of direct file functions.
• Date handling switched to timezone-safe functions.
• Added translator comments for all strings with placeholders.
• No changes to features or behaviour.

1.3.0

• Marking in the overview and people list of whether a greeting was already sent this year.
• Preview of upcoming birthdays in the next 7 days.
• People list sortable by first name, last name, birthday or email (click the column header); default sort is by birthday.

1.2.0

• People can be added manually in the people list.
• "Delete entire list" button with confirmation.

1.1.0

• Optional fully automatic sending at 9:00 a.m.
• Built-in help in the admin area.
• Bilingual: German and English.

1.0.0

• First release.