Getting memberships to automatically update (expired, grace, etc.)

CiviCRM does not automatically set your members to Expired when their membership end date passes. A cron job has to be setup on your server (along with some other things) to get this to happen. Here's how to do it:

1. Open the civicrm/bin/UpdateMembershipRecord.php file
   • For Joomla! under /administrator/components/com_civicrm/
   • For Drupal, under /sites/all/modules/
2. Add the FROM address that you want renewal e-mails to come from at approximately line 197
3. Create a random site key that is 16 to 32 characters long. Add it to your civicrm.settings.php file
4. Rename the UpdateMembershipRecord.php.txt file to UpdateMembershipRecord.php
5. Setup a cron job as noted here:

// 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>'

See the following link (green box about halfway down) for the source of these instructions. http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Membership+Types