Dynamic Dates

Calculates dates and relative dates dynamically in your posts and pages. For example:

Our church’s next service is on Mar 21/15

[date format="M d/Y" time="this Sunday"]

Add an always up-to-date copyright notice, or the date of your next monthly poker game.

See examples on my website. See the FAQ for instructions on use.

* What’s New for v2 *

• Now supporting the local WordPress timezone, user-specified timezones, and user-specified languages!

Requirements

• PHP 5.2 for user-specified timezones or PHP 5.3 with the International extension for user-specified languages.

1. Download Dynamic Dates
2. Unzip and upload the resulting folder to the ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ directory
3. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
4. Place a Dynamic Date shortcode in your posts and/or pages. A theme template function call is also available.

How does it work?

Dynamic Dates uses PHP’s strtotime() function to parse natural language into relative timestamps. For example, two years from now is “+2 year” and Canadian Thanksgiving is the “second monday of october” . Browse the full strtotime() reference to find other possibilities.

How can I display a simple date?

Use one of the built-in shortcodes:

[now], [yesterday], [today], [tomorrow], [last-month], [this-month], [next-month], [last-year], [this-year], [next-year]

See live examples at my website.

How can I display a customized date?

This is a very powerful feature. Use any shortcode, or the generic [date] shortcode, and extend it with the following attributes, each of which is optional:

• format – a pattern to format the date or time. Browse the different formatting codes for English mode and International mode.
• time – the date or time specified with natural language
• relative_to – a date or time that the first time is “relative to”, also specified with natural language
• timezone – a timezone to display (the default is set in the WordPress settings (requires PHP 5.2 or higher)
• language – a language to use (requires PHP 5.3 or higher)

‘English Mode’ advanced examples:

It’s Sunday 15:58:47 in Paris, France

[date format="l H:i:s" timezone="Europe/Paris"]

Canadian Thanksgiving is October 12th this year and October 10th next year

[date format="F jS" time="second monday of october"]
[date format="F jS" time="second monday of october" relative_to="next year"]

‘International Mode’ advanced examples:

Voy a la fiesta el viernes 22 de marzo

`[date format="d de MMMM" "time="friday" language="es_CL"]`

See live examples at my website.

1. 

   Dynamic Dates running at jasonhendriks.com

2.0.5 – 2015-05-08

• [Ticket] Dates tags resulted in an error if the WordPress timezone was a GMT offset. Fixed.

2.0.3 – 2015-03-20

• Fixed: The method used to calculate the current timezone was faulty for some environments (produced ‘-4’ for Toronto instead of ‘-5’ during DST)
• Fixed: The method used to apply timezones was incorrectly applying it to calculated dates without times (eg. ‘next sunday’)
• Added an option to set the Log Level (defaulted to Error) instead of just blindly writing debug lines into debug.log/error.log
• Fixed: Systems with no ability to format international dates were incorrectly allowed to enable international formatting

2.0.2 – 2015-01-28

• Fixed: In some PHP environments, the WordPress timezone setting can not be interpreted – the error is DateTimeZone::__construct() [datetimezone.–construct]: Unknown or bad timezone

2.0.1 – 2015-01-27

• Gave the settings group name a more unique name to avoid collisions with other plugins

2.0 – 2015-01-25

• Added timezone support, the most requested feature. The default timezone is set in the WordPress configuration. Requires PHP 5.2. Use the timezone shortcode attribute.
• Added international language support, the second most requested feature. The default language is set in the WordPress configuration. Requires PHP 5.3 with the International extension. Use the language shortcode attribute.

1.0.1 – 2015-01-23

• A biennial update to re-list Dynamic Dates in the WordPress plugin directory

1.0.0 – 2011-05-03

• First release
• Tested with PHP v5.3.4