CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

In the CiviCRM guide, these are the instructions for editing and using UpdateMembershipRecord.php:

Membership Status and Reminder Server Requirement
Keeping Membership Status updated and using the Renewal Reminder Day function requires that on your server you setup a "cron job" to run a script which will update membership statuses and send out reminders.

A command-line php script - bin/UpdateMembershipRecord.php.txt - is provided which updates the status for each membership record based on your configured status rules. This script will also send Renewal Reminder emails to members for Membership Types that are configured to do so:

You will need to edit this file to set the FROM email address at line 197 and save it as UpdateMembershipRecord.php before running it.

Starting with release 1.8 you will need to include the username and password for an authorized Drupal or Joomla user to "authenticate" the script. This must be someone with Edit Contact permissions for contacts.

Starting with versions 2.0.7 and 2.1.2, you will also need to configure a site key to run this script (learn more...).

Then, you will need to setup a "cron job" on your server to execute this script on a daily basis (or periodically based on your organization's requirements).
If you want to script to update Membership Status but do not want to send a reminder email, you can comment out lines approimately 184 through 257 (check your brackets)

Use wget to run the script:
// For Drupal installs - replace <drupal_root> with the base URL of your Drupal site

$ wget 'http://<drupal_root>/sites/all/modules/civicrm/bin/UpdateMembershipRecord.php?
name=<username>&pass=<pw>&key=<sitekey>'

// For Joomla installs - replace <joomla_root> with the base URL of your Joomla! site

$ wget 'http://<joomla_root>/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/bin/UpdateMembershipRecord.php?
name=<username>&pass=<pw>&key=<sitekey>'
You can also run the script by entering the above URL in your browser location bar. This is a useful trick for debugging any problems you may have running the script.

I've changed the FROM email address as per the instructions and set up the cron job on my server, but I have 2 questions --

My questions are:

1. Where would I put the "site key" information into this file?  I haven't created a site key yet and things are running smoothly for a year.  Do I really need to add that information to this UpdateMembershipRecord.php file and, if so, where and how would I include it in this script?  The "Learn More" link doesn't really explain how to put the site key into the various files it says will need it, just how to create the site key and put it in civicrm.settings.php.

2.  Where and how do I include the user name and password to authenticate this script?  I guess I would use the admin user name and password, but is there a line of script I need to add to this file?

Thank you!!