AM Events vs Herodotus – On This Day

The purpose of this plugin is to add an event type similar to the normal post type. By design this plugin doesn’t provide any ready-made layouts, and allows the events to be fully integrated and customized to the theme of your choosing. Current Features Admin pages to view/create/modify events. Available data fields for events: start date, end date, venue, category Create weekly or biweekly recurring events Fully customizable widget for displaying upcoming events. The custom post type created by the plugin is named ‘am_event’ and has two taxonomies: ‘am_event_categories’ and ‘am_venues’. Dates are stored as post metadata. Displaying the events is done in the theme files using WP_Query and the template tags provided by the plugin. This allows full control over the layout and what elements to show. The widget for displaying upcoming events uses a simple template system for full control of the layout. If you think something critical is missing, feel free to send me a request. The plugin is available in the following languages (pot-file included for additional translations): English French Norwegian Finnish TUTORIAL For integrating AM Events to an existing theme, I suggest creating a child theme with custom page templates. You can find an example of a working Twenty Twelve child theme from https://github.com/attemoi/am-events-child-theme containing three different page templates for event pages. Widget Here are the shortcodes available in the upcoming events widget template. [event-title] [start-date] [end-date] [event-venue] [event-category] [content] [thumbnail] [excerpt] [permalink] [meta] Conditional shortcodes: [if cond=”startdate-is-enddate”] [if cond=”startdate-not-enddate”] [if cond=”startday-is-endday”] [if cond=”startday-not-endday”] [if cond=”has-venue”] [if cond=”has-category”] The title can be linked to the event post with the ‘link’ attribute, e.g. [event-title link=true] The category and venue can also be linked similarly to their respective archive pages using the ‘link’ attribute, e.g. [event-category link=true] The number of words displayed in the title, content or excerpt can be limited by the ‘limit’ attribute, e.g. [content limit=25] or [event-title limit=10]. The dates can be formatted using the ‘format’ attribute, e.g. [start-date format=’d.m.Y H:i’] (see PHP date for formatting options). If no format is given, the default WordPress date format is used. You can use any shortcode as many times as needed in a single template. To separate date and time of start date for example you could write: [start-date format='d.m.Y'] divider [start-date format='H:i'] Example usage of conditional shortcode: [start-date format='D d.m.Y H:s'] [if cond='startdate-not-enddate'] - [end-date format='D d.m.Y H:s'] [/if] Template tags Template tags were introduced in version 1.3.0 and are listed below. More documentation can be found in the source files. // Template tags for getting and displaying event dates am_the_startdate($format = 'Y-m-d H:i:s', $before = '', $after = '', $echo = true) am_get_the_startdate( $format = 'Y-m-d H:i:s', $post = 0 ) am_the_enddate($format = 'Y-m-d H:i:s', $before = '', $after = '', $echo = true) am_get_the_enddate( $format = 'Y-m-d H:i:s', $post = 0 ) // Template tags for getting and displaying event venues am_get_the_venue( $id = false ) am_in_venue( $venue, $post = null ) am_get_the_venue_list( $separator = '', $parents='', $post_id = false ) am_the_venue( $separator = '', $parents='', $post_id = false ) // Template tags for getting and displaying event categories am_get_the_event_category( $id = false ) am_get_the_event_category_list( $separator = '', $parents='', $post_id = false ) am_in_event_category( $eventCategory, $post = null ) am_the_event_category( $separator = '', $parents='', $post_id = false ) Example of displaying the first category of the current event post: $categoryArray = am_get_the_event_category(); echo $categoryArray[0]->name; Creating a WP_Query The custom post type is named ‘am_event’ The taxonomies are named ‘am_venues’ and ‘am_event_categories’. The event post has metadata named ‘am_startdate’ and ‘am_enddate’ that are formatted like ‘yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm’ So suppose I wanted to display all events with a category of ‘other’ and venue ‘mcdonalds’. I would then make a WP_Query like this: $args = array( 'post_type' => 'am_event', 'post_status' => 'publish', 'tax_query' => array( 'relation' => 'AND', array( 'taxonomy' => 'am_venues', 'field' => 'name', 'terms' => 'mcdonalds', ), array( 'taxonomy' => 'am_event_categories', 'field' => 'name', 'terms' => 'other' ), ), ); $the_query = new WP_Query($args); if ($the_query->have_posts()) { while ($the_query->have_posts()) { $the_query->the_post(); $postId = $post->ID; // Use template tags to get start and end date $startDate = am_get_the_startdate('Y-m-d H:i:s'); $endDate = am_get_the_enddate('Y-m-d H:i:s'); // Use template tags to get venues and categories in an array $venues = am_get_the_venue( $postId ); $eventCategories = am_get_the_category( $postId ); // All the other functions used for posts like // the_title() and the_content() work just like with normal posts. // ... DISPLAY POST CONTENT HERE ... // } } If you want the events ordered by start date, add the following to $args: 'orderby' => 'meta_value', 'meta_key' => 'am_startdate', 'order' => 'ASC', If you need to display only upcoming events, add the following meta_query argument to $args: 'meta_query' => array( array( 'key' => 'am_enddate', 'value' => date('Y-m-d H:i:s', time()), 'compare' => ">", ), ), The plugin folder also contains a file “examples.php”, which contains an example function for displaying upcoming events in a table.

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 herodotus_post 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: Dedicated Custom Post Type — keeps your regular blog posts completely separate from historical events. Custom Taxonomy — group historical events into categories like “Science”, “Politics”, “Birthdays”, etc. Annual Recursion — just set “May 15” and the post appears every May 15, forever. Three Layouts — standard list layout for pages, compact layout for sidebars and widgets, and a plain text layout with no images at all. Shortcode & Gutenberg Block — use [herodotus] or the included block to display events anywhere. Year Support — set the year of the event for display purposes. Year Badge — the historical year is displayed as a badge on each event card, so visitors immediately see when the event occurred. BC/AD Era Support — mark events as BC or AD. BC events are sorted chronologically before AD events. The “AD” label is shown in the year badge when selected. Category Filtering — display posts from a specific category using [herodotus category="history"]. Category Labels — category is displayed on each event card and on the single event page. Hide Images — show posts as text-only using [herodotus show_image="false"]. Open Graph & Twitter Card — automatic meta tags for beautiful social media sharing previews. 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. Timezone Aware — strictly respects your WordPress timezone settings. WPML & Polylang Ready — includes wpml-config.xml for full multilingual compatibility. Translation Ready — includes translations for Georgian, Russian, Ukrainian, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Turkish. Caching — built-in transient caching for fast frontend performance. 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. Quick Edit — change the day, month, year and era straight from the posts list, without opening the editor. RSS Feed — /herodotus/feed/ delivers today’s events, refreshed every day. Works with RSS readers and automation services. Available Shortcode Attributes: [herodotus] — show today’s posts using global settings. [herodotus layout="compact"] — compact view, ideal for sidebars. [herodotus layout="text"] — plain text list: no images, no card borders. [herodotus limit="5"] — limit to first 5 posts. [herodotus category="history"] — show posts from a specific category (use slug). [herodotus excerpt_words="15"] — set custom excerpt length. [herodotus show_image="false"] — hide images, show only title, excerpt and Read more. [herodotus order="DESC"] — reverse sort order for this instance (overrides the global setting). [herodotus_random] — show a random pick out of today’s events. Accepts limit, category, layout, excerpt_words and show_image.