Title: On This Day (by Room 34)
Author: Room 34 Creative Services, LLC
Published: January 19, 2012
Last modified: May 18, 2026
---
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# On This Day (by Room 34)
By [Room 34 Creative Services, LLC](https://profiles.wordpress.org/room34/)
[Download](https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/room-34-presents-on-this-day.3.7.0.1.zip)
* [Details](https://wordpress.org/plugins/room-34-presents-on-this-day/#description)
* [Reviews](https://wordpress.org/plugins/room-34-presents-on-this-day/#reviews)
* [Installation](https://wordpress.org/plugins/room-34-presents-on-this-day/#installation)
* [Development](https://wordpress.org/plugins/room-34-presents-on-this-day/#developers)
[Support](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/room-34-presents-on-this-day/)
## Description
On This Day (formerly “Room 34 presents On This Day”) is a simple widget that displays
a list of blog posts that were published on the same date in previous years. Customization
options include:
* Title
* Message to display if no posts are found
* Maximum posts to display
* Show featured images (if available)
* Category filtering
* Optional On This Day archive page (new in version 2.0)
**Important:** While not technically required, the On This Day archive page assumes
your theme includes an **archive.php** file that uses the **the_archive_title()**
function to display the page title.
## Installation
1. Upload the plugin files to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory.
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.
3. Place the widget in one of your sidebars and customize as desired.
**Note:** This plugin requires PHP 5.3 or greater due to the use of anonymous functions(
closures).
## FAQ
### Why isn’t the archive page displaying the correct (or any) title?
If there’s an incorrect title, or no title, at the top of your page (before the
title of the first post), check your theme. It should have an **archive.php** file,
and that file must use the **the_archive_title()** function to display the page
title.
## Reviews
### [Great plugin, even better support](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/great-plugin-even-better-support-207/)
[ricky810](https://profiles.wordpress.org/ricky810/) November 25, 2025
This is a really solid plugin. It’s simple, with no bloat, but also pretty flexible.
Does everything I need and for one refinement I asked for the author provided it
within 48h.
### [Excellent plugin](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/excellent-plugin-9601/)
[dimaan](https://profiles.wordpress.org/dimaan/) June 14, 2025
The new update ensures that the post can also be displayed in its entirety, a great
plugin!
### [Very good!](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/very-good-7450/)
[cueyelink](https://profiles.wordpress.org/cueyelink/) October 28, 2024
My personal blog is largely based on this plugin. The front page only shows posts
that are up to date. I have tested a number of plugins, all were disappointing,
but this one works fine.
### [Best!!!](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/best-1289/)
[madinfinity](https://profiles.wordpress.org/madinfinity/) April 3, 2024
This is the best and only plugin to display Day in HistoryThanks to the developer!
### [Been looking for this for ages](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/been-looking-for-this-for-ages-2/)
[darro](https://profiles.wordpress.org/darro/) November 17, 2020
Pretty much the same as doubledown00 I’ve been looking for a addin like this for
ages Well done, easy to use.
### [I have been looking for this for awhile!](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/i-have-been-looking-for-this-for-awhile/)
[doubledown00](https://profiles.wordpress.org/doubledown00/) May 10, 2020
I’m not real big on leaving reviews in general but I’m leaving one here. If adding
more reviews helps bring attention to this plugin and makes it more popular, so
be it! I have blog entries and stuff I imported from previous platforms going back
to 1996. I have been looking for a way to highlight some of this old content based
on date, similar to how Slashdot.org does it in their “This Day on Slashdot” widget.
The only thing is I couldn’t find anything that would do it. There were plugins
that would do “this day in history” and other criteria. But I couldn’t find a plugin
that would do it based on content entered in Wordpress. The plugin its self is *
very* easy to use. Install, activate, and add it as a widget wherever you want it.
Done. There are some settings you can tweak regarding how many entries to show,
what categories, etc. I had the whole thing up and running in five minutes.
[ Read all 8 reviews ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/room-34-presents-on-this-day/reviews/)
## Contributors & Developers
“On This Day (by Room 34)” is open source software. The following people have contributed
to this plugin.
Contributors
* [ Room 34 Creative Services, LLC ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/room34/)
“On This Day (by Room 34)” has been translated into 2 locales. Thank you to [the translators](https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/room-34-presents-on-this-day/contributors)
for their contributions.
[Translate “On This Day (by Room 34)” into your language.](https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/room-34-presents-on-this-day)
### Interested in development?
[Browse the code](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/room-34-presents-on-this-day/),
check out the [SVN repository](https://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/room-34-presents-on-this-day/),
or subscribe to the [development log](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/room-34-presents-on-this-day/)
by [RSS](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/room-34-presents-on-this-day/?limit=100&mode=stop_on_copy&format=rss).
## Changelog
#### 3.7.0.1 – 2026.05.18
* Minor code refactoring to pass [Plugin Check](https://wordpress.org/plugins/plugin-check/)
tests.
* Bumped “tested up to” to 7.0.
#### 3.7.0 – 2025.11.24
* Added filters (`r34otd_permalink`, `r34otd_thumbnail`, `r34otd_title`, `r34otd_date_format`,`
r34otd_excerpt`, `r34otd_categories`, and `r34otd_tags`) to allow customization
of all post output in the widget. Each filter accepts two input parameters: the
current value and the post ID.
#### 3.6.2 – 2025.11.17
* Added CSS to force featured images to fit constraints of container.
* Bumped “tested up to” to 6.9.
#### 3.6.1 – 2025.08.01
* Added random order option.
* i18n: Updated translation strings.
#### 3.6.0 – 2025.07.31
* Added `show_categories` and `show_tags` options to display taxonomy terms associated
with each post in the list.
* Modified logic for `no_posts_message` so it must be set to `false` to prevent
display of an empty list. Updated widget instructions to indicate this must be`
false` rather than blank, since it’s impossible to save a blank value. (Saving
with a blank value reverts to the default text “Nothing has ever happened on
this day. Ever.”)
* Improved admin styling, in particular making the **Additional Options** text
appear as a link to be more obviously clickable than the default presentation
of the `` tag in most browsers. Made “See all…” text input display conditionally
depending on whether or not the **Show On This Day archive link** checkbox is
checked, since the text input is only relevant when it is checked.
* Added **On This Day:** label to month/day dropdowns the plugin adds to Posts
admin page, to clarify their purpose and function.
* Added **Settings** on the admin page. Currently limited to the new **Theme**
option. The “minimal” theme does not change anything from the existing presentation.
The “standard” theme currently only adds a small bit of additional styling to
the date and meta data.
* Updated shortcode instructions on admin page to address the changes listed above.
* Bumped PHP requirement to 7.4. (The plugin may work with earlier versions but
I no longer have a platform for testing support.)
* i18n: Updated translation strings.
#### 3.5.0.2 – 2025.07.29
* Added support for entering `title=""` or `title="false"` in the shortcode (as
well as “false” in the widget) to suppress displaying a title heading above the
post list. (Previously, using `title=" "` — with a space — worked, but it was
not documented.)
#### 3.5.0.1 – 2025.06.13
* Corrected error in instruction text for `before_widget` shortcode option on admin
page.
#### 3.5.0 – 2025.06.13
* Bug fix: `show_post_excerpts` shortcode parameter now properly handles word length
values rather than forcing the default of 25.
* Security and accessibility: Analyzed code against the [Plugin Check (PCP)](https://wordpress.org/plugins/plugin-check/)
plugin for best practices; added escape functions for all translatable text output.
* Admin:
- Reorganized the list of parameters in the **Shortcode Guide** to logically
match the sequence of options presented in the widget, rather than alphabetically,
and separated out the shortcode-only options.
- CSS updates.
* i18n:
- Changed text domain from `r34otd` to the much more cumbersome `room-34-presents-
on-this-day`, since WordPress (as of version 4.6) expects the text domain
to match the folder name of the plugin; the plugin ended up with this verbose
name because there was already another, long-abandoned plugin that used `on-
this-day`. **Any existing translation files will need to be renamed.**
- Updated translation strings.
#### 3.4.0 – 2024.10.09
* Added support for **Categories** option when using the Widgets Block Editor.
* Added `functions.php` file and `r34otd_boolean_check()` function to more flexibly
handle boolean values for certain shortcode parameters.
* Refactored all code that directly echoes variable values to use standard WordPress
escape functions; additional minor code refactoring.
* i18n: Updated translation strings in `.pot` file.
* Updated copyright details.
* Bumped “tested up to” to 6.7.
#### 3.3.0.1 – 2024.08.05
* Bug fix: Modified conditional in `R34OnThisDay::widget()` to prevent PHP undefined
array key error.
#### 3.3.0 – 2024.08.01
* Added **Include post types** option to support Custom Post Types as well as standard
posts. (The built-in public post types “page” and “attachment” are not supported,
as pages are not intended to be date-based, and attachment pages really shouldn’t
exist.)
* Grouped “Additional Options” in widget configuration under a `` expander.
* Modified archive template to remove restriction that omits any posts published“
today.” Added code to potentially include custom post types, but left commented
out for now because this really should have an admin setting to manage which
post types are included. (Without that, post types from common third party plugins
like WooCommerce and The Events Calendar would be included, grouped under their
publish dates, which is illogical for the user experience.
* i18n: Updated translation strings in `.pot` file.
* Bumped “tested up to” to 6.6.
#### 3.2.1.1 – 2024.04.23
* Modified conditional that could cause an `Undefined array key` error in some
cases.
* Bumped “tested up to” to 6.5.2.
#### 3.2.1 – 2024.02.11
* Admin: Updated content and layout of shortcode guide on admin page.
* Bug fix: Incorrect alias key in line 29 of `widget.php`.
* Shortcode: Added support for custom excerpt lengths by setting an integer value
for `show_post_excerpt`. Support for this feature will be added to the widget
in a future update.
* i18n: Updated translation strings in `.pot` file.
* Bumped “tested up to” to 6.4.3.
#### 3.2.0.1 – 2024.01.04
* Rolled back CSS styling (font sizes/margins) based on negative user feedback.
Styling will return as an _option_ in a future update.
#### 3.2.0 – 2024.01.01
* Added **Show post dates** and **Show post excerpts** options. (To conserve space
in the widget, excerpts use the `excerpt_length` and `excerpt_more` hooks to
override site defaults; length is shortened to 25 words if longer; “more” is
always `...`.)
* Changed: Front end post dates now show year only unless **Show post dates** is
checked.
* Added CSS to adjust relative sizes of titles, dates and excerpts, reduced white
space in CSS files, and added logic to append the version number to the enqueued
CSS files.
* Reorganized admin widget configuration interface.
* i18n: Added `.pot` file for translation strings.
#### 3.1.2 – 2023.12.20
* Updated widget output to use `get_the_title()` instead of retrieving the post’s
title property directly, allowing for use of the `the_title` filter.
#### 3.1.1 – 2021.11.20
* Updated plugin name on admin pages.
#### 3.1.0 – 2021.11.20
* Changed displayed plugin name from “Room 34 presents On This Day” to “On This
Day (by Room 34)”.
* Changed `require_once()` instances in main plugin file to use `plugin_dir_path()`
instead of `dirname()`.
* Updated tags in readme file.
* Bumped “tested up to” to 5.8.2.
#### 3.0.2
* Removed support for the Category option if the widget block editor is enabled(
included by default with WordPress 5.8). The functionality for loading the category
list and saving that option does not work with the AJAX-based tools in the block
editor, and the presence of this option was causing the plugin not to load at
all in the widget block editor, although it still functioned properly on the
site itself. **If you wish to restore the old widget editing functionality, we
suggest trying the [Classic Widgets](https://wordpress.org/plugins/classic-widgets/)
plugin.**
#### 3.0.1
* Changed shortcode behavior to return output instead of echoing it directly.
#### 3.0.0
* Added shortcode support. Use `[on_this_day]` anywhere shortcodes are supported.
All of the regular widget options are available as shortcode parameters. See
the plugin’s new settings page for details.
* Oh yeah, there’s also now a settings page! Go to **Settings > On This Day**.
* Added code to handle an arbitrary date (currently only works with shortcode,
not widget).
* Fixed issue that was causing admin CSS file to load on front-end pages.
* Created separate front-end CSS file.
* Coming soon: translations!
#### 2.5.1
* Modified conditions to show current year’s posts in widget when “Use post date”
is set.
* Improved help text in widget configuration.
* Added text domain to i18n functions in preparation for translation support.
* Minor CSS tweaks in admin.
#### 2.5.0.2
* Fixed displayed publish date of posts to resolve issues when post’s publish _time_
falls on a different date between local time and GMT/UTC+0.
* Bumped tested up to version to 5.5.3.
#### 2.5.0.1
* Fixed incorrect callback function name in `pre_get_document_title` filter.
#### 2.5.0
* Replaced all closures in actions and filters with named functions to give developers
more flexibility in working with the plugin.
* Removed “On This Day” from archive page titles in keeping with the goal of avoiding
any hardcoded front-end text until full i18n support is implemented.
#### 2.4.1
* Made ‘See all…’ text string editable in widget configuration. This was the only
non-editable text displayed on the front end. Making this text editable will
allow for easier use of the plugin on non-English language websites while full
i18n support is in development.
#### 2.4.0
* Replaced uses of PHP `date()` and WordPress `date_i18n()` function with `wp_date()`
for improved i18n support. (Full i18n support for all displayed text strings
coming in a subsequent update.)
#### 2.3.0
* Removed “See all…” links when a date has no posts.
* Removed “On This Post’s Date” when on archive pages.
* Fixed logic for “See all…” pages to work with a specific (not today’s) date.
#### 2.2.2
* Added option to hide widget entirely when list is empty by leaving “Message to
display if no posts are found” blank.
* Modified logic for hiding redundant lists so that if two lists on the same page
are both _empty_ and “Message to display if no posts are found” is set, then
they’ll still appear.
#### 2.2.1
* Added logic to prevent duplicate list of posts from appearing multiple times
on one page. This allows creation of two widgets, one for showing today’s posts,
and one for “Use post date” posts, for example.
#### 2.2.0
* Added “Use post date” option to widget. If set, when viewing an individual post,
the widget will show posts from the same date as the current post, not today’s
date. On main blog or archive pages, widget will still show posts from today’s
date.
#### 2.1.0
* Added month/day filtering of Posts in admin to show all posts published on in
given month/date.
#### 2.0.2
* Fixed handling of a global array variable to resolve fatal errors with WP-CLI.
#### 2.0.1
* Simplified date_query.
#### 2.0.0
* Added On This Day Archive page.
* Refactored to use date_query instead of retrieving and then omitting posts from
the current year.
#### 1.5.3
* Made featured images clickable links to posts.
* Tested in WP 4.7.1.
#### 1.5.2.1
* Updated “Tested up to” to 4.7.
#### 1.5.2
* Fix for implode() warning when no categories were selected.
#### 1.5.1
* Updated plugin repository description text.
#### 1.5
* Added ability to filter list by category.
* Added ability to set maximum number of posts to display.
#### 1.4
* Added option to display featured image with each post.
* General refactoring and code clean-up.
#### 1.3
* Updated main function to use parent::__construct() for compatibility with WordPress
4.3.
#### 1.2
* Updated link structure to use standard permalinks instead of custom-built URL
format.
#### 1.1.1
* Updated “Tested up to” tag.
#### 1.1
* Added CSS class to ul tag and changed tag and class attribute for each li item.
#### 1.0
* Original version.
## Meta
* Version **3.7.0.1**
* Last updated **1 month ago**
* Active installations **200+**
* WordPress version ** 5.0 or higher **
* Tested up to **7.0**
* PHP version ** 7.4 or higher **
* Languages
* [English (US)](https://wordpress.org/plugins/room-34-presents-on-this-day/),
[Spanish (Chile)](https://cl.wordpress.org/plugins/room-34-presents-on-this-day/),
and [Spanish (Spain)](https://es.wordpress.org/plugins/room-34-presents-on-this-day/).
* [Translate into your language](https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/room-34-presents-on-this-day)
* Tags
* [archive](https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/archive/)[history](https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/history/)
[todays date](https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/todays-date/)
* [Advanced View](https://wordpress.org/plugins/room-34-presents-on-this-day/advanced/)
## Ratings
5 out of 5 stars.
* [ 8 5-star reviews ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/room-34-presents-on-this-day/reviews/?filter=5)
* [ 0 4-star reviews ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/room-34-presents-on-this-day/reviews/?filter=4)
* [ 0 3-star reviews ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/room-34-presents-on-this-day/reviews/?filter=3)
* [ 0 2-star reviews ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/room-34-presents-on-this-day/reviews/?filter=2)
* [ 0 1-star reviews ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/room-34-presents-on-this-day/reviews/?filter=1)
[Your review](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/room-34-presents-on-this-day/reviews/#new-post)
[See all reviews](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/room-34-presents-on-this-day/reviews/)
## Contributors
* [ Room 34 Creative Services, LLC ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/room34/)
## Support
Got something to say? Need help?
[View support forum](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/room-34-presents-on-this-day/)
## Donate
Would you like to support the advancement of this plugin?
[ Donate to this plugin ](https://room34.com/payments)