The Javascript Smart Marketing Toolkit

Javascript date handling toolkit

This is part of the Javascript Smart Marketing Toolkit.

The date handling features of the toolkit can be used to automate seasonal promotions and weekly promotions.

They can also be used to add a bit more life to your copy, by making it respond to the time.

A time-responsive message like "Why not come down tomorrow - we're open until 10pm on a Saturday and it's not too late to phone us today to make a reservation" becomes easy to program. Site visitors can focus on what's relevant now instead of scanning pages of text for the same information.

The time and date used are those set on the visitor's computer, except that the countdown uses Universal Time Coordinated (UTC) time for the dates. Roughly speaking, this is UK time. Given that the countdown is working in days (rather than hours or minutes), this may be accurate enough for use in many other countries.

Table explaining date functions of the toolkit
function	what it does	example code
the_hour()	Returns the hour from the time now (24 hour clock)	if (the_hour()<12) {document.write("Good morning!");} else if (the_hour()<18) {document.write("Good afternoon!");} else document.write("Good evening!");
the_minute()	Returns the minute from the time now	See example for the_second()
the_second()	Returns the second from the time now	document.write("The time is ",the_hour(),":", the_minute(),":",the_second());
the_date()	Returns today's date	document.write("Today's date:",day_name(the_day())," ",the_date()," ",month_name(the_month()));
the_day()	Returns the day of the week, where 0 is Sunday and 6 is Saturday	if (the_day()==6 \|\| the_day()==0) { document.write("Spoil yourself this weekend!"); } else document.write("Relax - you've been working hard today");
the_year()	Returns the year. I needed this for some of the internal code, so I'm exposing it here. I'm not sure how useful it is, compared to the other functions.	document.write(the_year());
day_name()	Returns the name of a given day, where 0 is Sunday and 6 is Saturday	document.write("Today is ",day_name(the_day()));
the_month()	Returns the month number, where 0 is January and 11 is December	if (the_month()==11) {document.write("Seasons greetings!");}
month_name()	Returns the name of a given month, where 0 is January and 11 is December	document.write("This ",month_name(the_month())," why not take a weekend break?");
countdown(year, month, date, event description, message after event happens )	Displays the number of days remaining until a given date (example shown is for a book being published on 27th July 2020). Dates use conventional numbering (1 is January, 12 is December). On day 0, the post-event message is shown. This is good for counting down to a product launch.	countdown(2020, 7, 27, "to publication day!", "This book is out now!");
countdown_recurring(month, date, event description, message for day of event )	Displays the number of days remaining until the next occurrence of a given date (example shown is for Christmas Day). Dates use conventional numbering (1 is January, 12 is December). On day 0, the message for the day of the event is shown. This is good for counting down to anniversaries, birthdays, and holidays that have the same date each year. Using it, you can include a counter on your website that does not need modifying each year.	countdown_recurring(12,25, "to Christmas Day!", "It's Christmas Day! Happy Christmas!");

Cycling banner advert

See the page on banner cycling features of the toolkit for more information on what this is doing and how it works.

Navigating the toolkit:

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