Description
WP-RelativeDate rewrites your post and comment dates as how long ago they were: ‘Today’, ‘Yesterday’, ‘2 Days Ago’, ‘2 Weeks Ago’, ‘2 Hours Ago’, ‘2 Minutes Ago’, ‘2 Seconds Ago’.
There is nothing to configure and no settings screen. WP-RelativeDate rewrites your post and comment dates as soon as it is activated, and leaves anything more than a month old, or from a previous year, exactly as your theme printed it.
Features
- Post/Comment Date
- Today
- Yesterday
- X days ago
- X weeks ago
- Post/Comment Time
- X seconds ago
- X minutes ago
- X hours ago
Donations
I spent most of my free time creating, updating, maintaining and supporting these plugins, if you really love my plugins and could spare me a couple of bucks, I will really appreciate it. If not feel free to use it without any obligations.
Usage
You need not do anything. WP-RelativeDate will automatically modify your post/comment date or time display. No text will be added if the post or comment is more than a month old.
Examples
- Post/Comment Date
- Today
- Yesterday
- 10th January 2007 (2 days ago)
- 25th January 2007 (2 weeks ago)
- Post/Comment Time
- 21:10 (2 seconds ago)
- 21:15 (5 minutes ago)
- 22:15 (2 hours ago)
Shortcodes
[relativedate][relativedate date_format="jS F Y" ago_only="false"]
-
[relativetime][relativetime time_format="H:i" ago_only="false"]
ago_only drops the date or time and leaves only the relative phrase. It accepts
true/false,1/0,yes/noandon/off.
Template Tags
relative_post_the_date( $format, $before, $after, $ago_only, $display )— a drop-in replacement forthe_date().$beforeand$aftercarry markup, exactly as they do inthe_date().
Turning It Off For One Template
The plugin has no settings screen. To leave a template’s dates alone, remove the filter before the loop:
remove_filter( 'get_the_date', 'relative_post_date', 999 );
The four callbacks are relative_post_date on get_the_date, relative_post_time on get_the_time, relative_comment_date on get_comment_date and relative_comment_time on get_comment_time, all at priority 999.
Removing the get_the_date filter also covers the_date(), which builds its output by calling get_the_date(). The same goes for the_time(), comment_date() and comment_time().
Screenshots
relativedate and relativetime shortcodes, in a post published minutes agoInstallation
- Install and activate the plugin.
That is the whole of it. There is no settings screen and nothing to configure: your post and comment dates are rewritten as soon as the plugin is active, and anything older than a month is left exactly as your theme printed it.
FAQ
-
Display Relative Date in every posts
-
- If you want to display Relative Date in every posts, use
relative_post_the_date()instead ofthe_date()in your theme.
- If you want to display Relative Date in every posts, use
-
Why did my theme’s “ around the date start showing up as text?
-
- That was a bug in 1.51.1, fixed in 2.0.0.
relative_post_the_date()was escaping its own$beforeand$afterarguments. Upgrading is the fix; no theme change is needed.
- That was a bug in 1.51.1, fixed in 2.0.0.
-
My post dates are still plain on a block theme
-
- This affects WordPress 6.9 and later only. From 6.9 the core Post Date block resolves the date through Block Bindings and formats it itself, without calling
get_the_date()or offering a filter, so no plugin can change what it prints. On WordPress 6.8 that block still callsget_the_date()and relative post dates work on block themes too. - Comment dates are unaffected on every supported version — the Comment Date block still calls
get_comment_date(). Post dates also work normally on classic themes and anywhere a template callsthe_date(),get_the_date(),the_time()orget_the_time(). - To get a relative post date in a block template, use the
[relativedate]shortcode or callrelative_post_the_date()from a block pattern or template part.
- This affects WordPress 6.9 and later only. From 6.9 the core Post Date block resolves the date through Block Bindings and formats it itself, without calling
-
I used `ago_only=”false”` and now the date is back
-
ago_only="false"has always been documented as meaning false, but until 2.0.0 the plugin read it as true. If you were relying on that, useago_only="true"to keep the ago-only output.
-
Does the plugin store anything in my database?
-
- One row, and a tiny one. There is nothing to configure, so the plugin stores no settings at all – only
wp_relativedate_version, which records the version last run so that an upgrade knows what it is upgrading from. Deleting the plugin from the Plugins screen removes it.
- One row, and a tiny one. There is nothing to configure, so the plugin stores no settings at all – only
Reviews
Contributors & Developers
“WP-RelativeDate” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors
“WP-RelativeDate” has been translated into 3 locales. Thank you to the translators for their contributions.
Translate “WP-RelativeDate” into your language.
Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Changelog
2.0.0
- BREAKING: Requires WordPress 6.8 and PHP 8.2, up from 6.0 and 7.4.
- BREAKING: The post callbacks moved from
the_date/the_timetoget_the_date/get_the_time. If you opted a template out withremove_filter( 'the_date', 'relative_post_date', 999 ), name the getter instead. - NEW: Restructured into
includes/, with the date and time calculations in aWP_RelativeDate_Coreclass. - NEW: Added the
wp_relativedate_versionrow, and anuninstall.phpthat deletes it on a single site and across a network. - NEW: Added a PHPUnit test suite and GitHub Actions CI.
- CHANGED: The two shortcode callbacks are now methods on the
WP_RelativeDateclass. Shortcodes are removed by tag, soremove_shortcode( 'relativedate' )is unaffected. - FIXED: Post dates now work on any theme using
get_the_date()orget_the_time(), which is every classic theme since Twenty Nineteen. The plugin previously only hookedthe_date()andthe_time(), so it appeared to do nothing on most themes. - FIXED: Comment dates now work on block themes. Core’s Comment Date block passes the comment as an argument and never sets the global the plugin used to read.
- FIXED:
relative_post_the_date()no longer escapes$beforeand$after, which had been rendering<h2>and friends as literal text since 1.51.1. - FIXED:
ago_only="false"now means false. The documented spelling had always been read as true. - FIXED: Post and comment dates no longer raise “Attempt to read property on null” when there is no post or comment in scope, which a recent-comments widget could trigger.
- FIXED: Content dated ahead of the server clock no longer renders “(-300 seconds ago)”.
- FIXED: Removed
load_plugin_textdomain(), which trips_doing_it_wrongon WordPress 6.7 and later.