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Herodotus is a specialized tool for creating recurring historical events based on Day and Month, making it perfect for “This Day in History”, birthdays, anniversaries, or any annual recurring timeline.
Unlike the default WordPress behavior where posts are tied to a specific publication year, Herodotus introduces its own <code>herodotus_post</code> Custom Post Type. You simply pick a day and a month from the custom date picker in the block editor, and your post will automatically appear on that exact day every single year.
Key Features:
<ul>
<li>Dedicated Custom Post Type — keeps your regular blog posts completely separate from historical events.</li>
<li>Custom Taxonomy — group historical events into categories like “Science”, “Politics”, “Birthdays”, etc.</li>
<li>Annual Recursion — just set “May 15” and the post appears every May 15, forever.</li>
<li>Two Layouts — standard list layout for pages, compact layout ideal for sidebars and widgets.</li>
<li>Shortcode & Gutenberg Block — use <code>[herodotus]</code> or the included block to display events anywhere.</li>
<li>Year Support — set the year of the event for display purposes.</li>
<li>Year Badge — the historical year is displayed as a badge on each event card, so visitors immediately see when the event occurred.</li>
<li>Category Filtering — display posts from a specific category using <code>[herodotus category="history"]</code>.</li>
<li>Category Labels — category is displayed on each event card and on the single event page.</li>
<li>Hide Images — show posts as text-only using <code>[herodotus show_image="false"]</code>.</li>
<li>Open Graph & Twitter Card — automatic meta tags for beautiful social media sharing previews.</li>
<li>Schema.org Markup — JSON-LD structured data (Article, Event, CollectionPage) for better SEO and Google rich results. Automatically disabled if Yoast SEO, RankMath, AIOSEO or The SEO Framework is active.</li>
<li>Timezone Aware — strictly respects your WordPress timezone settings.</li>
<li>WPML & Polylang Ready — includes <code>wpml-config.xml</code> for full multilingual compatibility.</li>
<li>Translation Ready — includes translations for Georgian, Russian, Ukrainian, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Turkish.</li>
<li>Caching — built-in transient caching for fast frontend performance.</li>
<li>Sortable Admin Columns — the posts list in the admin shows “Herodotus Date” and “Year” columns, both clickable to sort your events by date or year.</li>
</ul>
Available Shortcode Attributes:
<ul>
<li><code>[herodotus]</code> — show today’s posts using global settings.</li>
<li><code>[herodotus layout="compact"]</code> — compact view, ideal for sidebars.</li>
<li><code>[herodotus limit="5"]</code> — limit to first 5 posts.</li>
<li><code>[herodotus category="history"]</code> — show posts from a specific category (use slug).</li>
<li><code>[herodotus excerpt_words="15"]</code> — set custom excerpt length.</li>
<li><code>[herodotus show_image="false"]</code> — hide images, show only title, excerpt and Read more.</li>
<li><code>[herodotus order="DESC"]</code> — reverse sort order for this instance (overrides the global setting).</li>
</ul>

Herodotus – On This Day

Create an "On This Day" section on your WordPress site. Displays posts based on day and month — automatically, every year.

This plugin allows you to enter and manage different kinds of events that you then display in via a widget or shortcodes.
<h3>Shortcodes</h3>
There are two shortcodes. <code>[tdih]</code> shows output as a list similar to the widget and <code>[tdih_tab]</code> shows output as a table.
<h4>tdih</h4>
You can add a <code>[tdih]</code> shortcode to any post or page to display a list of events as per the widget.
There are eleven optional attributes for this shortcode
<ul>
<li>show_age (0, 1) – 1 shows the age in years of the event in brackets after the title and 0 does not (default).</li>
<li>show_link (0-2) – 0 shows a more link if there is more to show (default), 1 links the title if there is more to show and 2 always links the title.</li>
<li>show_type (0, 1) – 1 shows event types (default) and 0 does not.</li>
<li>
show_year (0, 1) – 1 shows the year of the event (default) and 0 does not.
</li>
<li>
type – enter a type to show only events of that type. Shows all types by default.
</li>
<li>day (1-31) – enter a day to show only events on that day. Shows all days by default.</li>
<li>month (1-12, c) – enter a month to show only events in that month. Shows all months by default.</li>
<li>year (-9999 to 9999, 0) – enter a year to show only events in that year. Shows all years by default.</li>
<li>period (t, m, y) – show events for today, tomorrow and yesterday. Shows today’s events by default.</li>
<li>classes – enter one or more space separated classes which will be added to the table tag.</li>
<li>max_rows (1-99) – enter a maximum number of events to show. Shows all events by default.</li>
</ul>
Example use:
<ul>
<li><code>[tdih]</code> – This shows year and event types for all event types for today’s events.</li>
<li><code>[tdih show_type=0 type='birth']</code> – This shows year and event but not type for the event type (slug) of birth.</li>
<li><code>[tdih year=1066 max_rows=5]</code> – This shows year and event types for up to five events that happened on this day in 1066.</li>
</ul>
<h4>tdih_tab</h4>
You can add a <code>[tdih_tab]</code> shortcode to any post or page to display a table of events.
There are fourteen optional attributes for this shortcode:
<ul>
<li>show_date (0, 1) – 1 shows the date (default) and 0 does not.</li>
<li>show_dow (0, 1) – 1 shows the day of the week and 0 does not (default).</li>
<li>show_head (0, 1) – 1 shows a header row (default) and 0 does not.</li>
<li>show_link (0, 1, 2) – 0 shows a more link if there is more to show, 1 links the title if there is more to show and 2 always links the title.</li>
<li>
show_type (0, 1) – 1 shows event types (default) and 0 does not.
</li>
<li>
order_dmy (0, 1) – 0 sorts chronologically by year-month-day (default) and 1 sorts by day-month-year.
</li>
<li>type – enter a type to show only events of that type. Shows all types by default.</li>
<li>day (1-31) – enter a day to show only events on that day. Shows all days by default.</li>
<li>month (1-12, c) – enter a month to show only events in that month. Shows all months by default.</li>
<li>year (-9999 to 9999, 0) – enter a year to show only events in that year. Shows all years by default.</li>
<li>period (a, c, l, m, n, t, w, y) – t, m, y show events for today, tomorrow and yesterday. c, l, n, w show events for current, last, next and ISO week. a show all events. Shows today’s events by default.</li>
<li>period_days (1-99) – enter the number of days to show for t, m, y periods only. Shows only one day by default.</li>
<li>date_format – enter a custom <a href="https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.date.php" rel="nofollow ugc">php date format</a> to display the date. Uses the tdih admin setting by default.</li>
<li>classes – enter one or more space separated classes which will be added to the table tag.</li>
</ul>
NB:
<ul>
<li>day of the week will never be shown if the date is not shown.</li>
<li>Setting date_format will override the tdih admin format and the day of the week setting.</li>
<li>Setting period will override any values for day, month and year.</li>
<li>day, month and year can be combined.</li>
<li>year=0 will display events with no year</li>
<li>month=c will display the current month</li>
<li>period=c, l or n show a seven day period with the current day as the middle, last or first day.</li>
</ul>
Example use:
<ul>
<li><code>[tdih_tab period='a']</code> – This shows a full list of events in date order and includes the event type.</li>
<li><code>[tdih_tab show_types=0 type='birth' classes='content dark']</code> – This shows events but not type for the event type (slug) of birth. ” content dark” will be added to the table’s class.</li>
<li><code>[tdih_tab day=20 month=8 date_format='Y']</code> – This shows events on 20th August in any year. Format the date to only show the four digit year.</li>
</ul>

This Day In History

Magnificent

This "On This Day" plugin allows you to enter historic or future events and display them via the included widget and shortcodes.

Herodotus – On This Day vs This Day In History