How to Display a Custom Daily Greeting

Introduction

I discovered a cool little trick while source diving through Scott Mathson's web site. With just a couple lines of JavaScript you can create a message that displays a different greeting depending on the day of the week.

Create a Script with a Weekday Array

Create a <script> tag with type of text/javascript. Define a variable called weekday with a different greeting set to each index.

<script type="text/javascript">

  var weekday = new Array(7)

  weekday[0] = "spectacular Sunday"
  weekday[1] = "marvelous Monday"
  weekday[2] = "terrific Tuesday"
  weekday[3] = "wonderful Wednesday"
  weekday[4] = "totally cool Thursday"
  weekday[5] = "fantastic Friday"
  weekday[6] = "sweet Saturday"

</script>

Set Weekday Value to the Current Date

Also inside the script tag, create a variable called currentDate set with the Date() object and then set the current day to weekdayValue.

var currentDate = new Date()
weekdayValue = currentDate.getDay()

Write to the Document

Use the Document.write() method to write a string of text to the document with paragraph tags containing the weekday value..

document.write(
  '<p>Have a ' + weekday[weekdayValue] + '!</p>'
)

Noscript Fallback

Lastly, you'll want to include a <noscript> tag in case the user has JavaScript turned off in their browser.

<noscript>
  <p>Have a great day!</p>
</noscript>

Full Script

<script type="text/javascript">

  var weekday = new Array(7)

  weekday[0] = "spectacular Sunday"
  weekday[1] = "marvelous Monday"
  weekday[2] = "terrific Tuesday"
  weekday[3] = "wonderful Wednesday"
  weekday[4] = "totally cool Thursday"
  weekday[5] = "fantastic Friday"
  weekday[6] = "sweet Saturday"

  var currentDate = new Date()
  weekdayValue = currentDate.getDay()

  document.write(
    '<p>Have a ' + weekday[weekdayValue] + '!</p>'
  )
</script>

<noscript>
  <p>Have a great day!</p>
</noscript>

Comments

[Scott Mathson]

I appreciate the shout-out, Anthony! 😊

[Lucia Cerchie]

This is so fun!

[Kevin Spencer]

Works great in joomla as long as you use code mirror editor.

[Jon Sanders]

Would it be possible to do this for every day of the year, and to make it a bunch of embedded YouTube videos as well? If so, how so? Thanks for a great post.