The Orchard can keep track of your birthday and will display upcoming birthdays in the Calendar (upper right). On someone's birthday, a notification appears at the bottom of the front page of the forum for their special day.

When you registered for the Orchard, you were asked your date of birth. If you need to change it (for example, if you 'forgot' to include the year of your birth in there (or you lied about it!)), you can modify your birthdate by following the steps below.
* Log into your account on the Orchard.
* Click My Controls (top right).
* Click Edit Profile info (left side menu). Edit your birthdate then click "Amend my Profile" to save the changes.

That's all there is to it! Add your birthdate (complete with the correct year!) so users of the forum can send you wishes on your special day.

You can send good wishes to others on their special day by Personal Message, email, or via the Universial Happy Birthday Thread (UHBT), here.

I'd like to suggest we have a discussion on the usefulness of a universal Happy Birthday Thread. I think it would be easier to keep track of, make a really cool record collected in one place <the archivist in me >, and minimize Gen Chatter clutter. I'll go with whatever the consensus is.

Yeah... a topic for each bithday person... is kinda silly...

Agreed... I'll start a HAPPY BIRTHDAY thread in General Chatter and encourage people to use that!

Excellent!

I'll go on record as protesting this. I think a "Universal Birthday Thread" is horribly impersonal, and that everyone deserves their own thread.

Oh please, you probably think everyone is "special" too. Seriously, we aren't children here, and it isn't necessary to make a big brouhaha over each and every birthday like it was when we were 5, 6, 7, 8, etc. Some of those individual birthday threads only get one or two replies, I suspect because people are sick of having new birthday threads constantly popping up. One of these days, someone will post a b-day thread and no one will reply, making the birthday person feel rejected or unloved. Then what are you gonna do, huh? If it was in a universal birthday thread, it wouldn't look so lonely (and maybe it wouldn't be so lonely).

Love you,
belly

I'll go on record as protesting this. I think a "Universal Birthday Thread" is horribly impersonal, and that everyone deserves their own thread.

If this decision is the worst thing that happens to me today, however, I'll be in very good shape.

Birthdays are for sucks...



(sorry, I just had to)

hey at least they're not starting an un-birthday thread for everyone.

All I will say is I turn the big 4-0 OCTOBER 3 and I expect LOTS AND LOTS of well wishes, in large, bold fonts (so my 40 year old eyes can see them!). LOL!

I tend to agree with Keith - everyone, regardless of how old we get, deserve 1 day of recognition or well wishes or eat dirts from our fellow orchard dwellers, right? Right.

Rock on

i agree, with keith and russ.
as i twin, i used to hate not having my own birthday, i guess there's some residual stuff still there. and it was so nice to come home to my own b-day thread. but then, im an attention-ho.
still, i like sending b-day thoughts to a personal thread. the personal just keeps getting pushed back and that bothers me.
i guess i'll just pm the person.

my 3 cents.
d.

holy crap. you have a twin?

from the Prisoner TV series: "I am not a number. I am a free man."

(d., I didn't know you were a twin. I have sinned many times vis-a-vis my twins with regard to each one's individuality.)

<EDIT> to stay on topic: I hope your birthday was nice.

thats ok Bill, i'm sure they forgive you. i just hated being called "hey twin!"

yep, steve. i am afraid it's true


ooooooooops! hijack. man! i cannot not hijack! i keep forgetting.
from now on you will find me in the hijack/random thoughts threads. thank you for your patience.

The objections are duely noted and will appear in the minutes.

However, the Universal Happy Birthday Thread (UHBT, if you like) stands.

If it's a tad bit too impersonal, consider a nice personal private message to the birthday person.

I've got to agree with the PM advocates here. Personally, I'd be far more touched by a single person sending a message directly to me than I would by 20 people piling on to a public thread about it.

good...

I agree that PMs are a great way for people to share birthday greetings.

Birthday greetings aren't really appropriate for the general forums, so the UNIVERSAL BIRTHDAY THREAD was created to consolidate those types of message into one place. If people wish to use PMs instead, that's super-fine with me.