Herodotus – On This Day

Herodotus is an On This Day WordPress plugin for displaying historical events, anniversaries and birthdays on their recurring calendar dates. Build a This Day in History section for a history blog, museum, school, music website or community archive.

Who is Herodotus for?

• History blogs – highlight historical events and their anniversaries on the relevant calendar dates.
• Schools and museums – present educational milestones, historical collections and events connected to your subjects or exhibits.
• Anniversary trackers – keep a recurring record of birthdays, founding dates and other annual milestones.
• Music and art sites – feature premieres, album releases, exhibitions and artists’ birthdays on their anniversaries.

The free plugin works on its own. Herodotus Pro is an optional paid add-on for importing event archives, adding more layouts and customizing their presentation.

Herodotus Pro: archive import, layouts and customization

Explore Herodotus Pro and live demos

Use Herodotus Pro to build a larger This Day in History archive from your existing files and present it in more layouts:

• CSV and TXT import – bring events from spreadsheets and text files, with an import preview, duplicate checks and progress tracking.
• Pro layouts with live demos – display event cards in columns with Grid, in a horizontal Carousel or along a dated Timeline.
• Upcoming events – show selected events before their recurring date, with a countdown.
• Appearance controls – adjust colors, font sizes, borders and image shape, crop and placement.
• Sources and locations – attach source references and record where an event happened, including coordinates and a map link.
• Categories, tags and priorities – combine categories and tags, exclude categories and give important events priority.
• Date modes – display a chosen calendar date or events around today.
• Data tools – export and import events and settings as JSON, or retrieve events through the Pro REST API endpoint.

Herodotus Pro requires this free plugin to remain installed and active. A 7-day Pro trial is available without a credit card.

Your first purchase is protected by a 14-day money-back guarantee. No questions asked. Refund Policy

Free vs Pro: compare features

Included in the free plugin

• Automatically display events matching today’s day and month in the site’s timezone.
• Choose list, compact or text layouts for pages, posts and sidebars.
• Add events through the WordPress editor and display them with a shortcode or Gutenberg block.
• Show featured images, excerpts, historical year badges and anniversary counters, with BC/AD support.
• Organize events into categories and filter a display by category.
• Adjust event limits, excerpt length and sort order; hide images when needed.
• Use Quick Edit to update dates directly in the events list.
• Include a random selection of today’s events with the random shortcode.
• Offer a daily RSS feed of today’s events.

How to create your history section

1. Install and activate Herodotus.
2. Create an event under Herodotus – On This Day and set its day, month and historical year. All three fields are required.
3. Add [herodotus] to a page or insert the Herodotus block.

You supply the event content. Herodotus displays entries on their assigned dates; it does not include a ready-made historical database.

For birthdays, anniversaries or a daily historical feature, create your archive once and let its recurring dates determine what appears each day.

Read the documentation