Verse of the Day Widget for WP

Verse of the Day Widget for WP puts a daily Bible verse on your WordPress site in under a minute. Each day a King James Version (KJV) verse is presented over an AI-generated static or animated background, giving visitors a fresh piece of scripture every time they arrive.

Every site running the plugin shows the same verse on the same date, so your readers share a true verse of the day with the rest of the network rather than seeing a random line of scripture. The daily selection is driven by your site’s own timezone setting, so the verse of the day rolls over at your local midnight.

The verses themselves are bundled inside the plugin, so nothing is fetched from an outside verse service. No account, no API key, no signup, no paid tier, and nothing about your visitors is collected or transmitted. That makes it a straightforward fit for church websites, ministry sites, devotional blogs, Christian schools, and any site that needs a daily scripture block without a privacy review attached.

Where most daily verse tools are English-only, this one translates the KJV text into over 100 languages. Rather than optimizing purely for modern readability the way a general translation service does, the translation step is prompted to preserve the formal phrasing and emphasis characteristic of the King James Version, so a Spanish, French, Tagalog, or Korean reader gets something closer in register to the English original.

Check out the live demos to see both layouts in action: Sidebar Demo | Header Demo

Three Ways To Place The Verse Of The Day

• Gutenberg blocks (block editor / site editor): Two native blocks, Verse of the Day Header and Verse of the Day Sidebar, appear under the Widgets category in the block inserter. Both are server-side rendered, so they work in block themes, full site editing templates, template parts, and patterns, not just inside post content.
• Classic widgets: A header widget and a compact sidebar widget are registered for any theme that still uses classic widget areas.
• Shortcodes: [votd_header_widget] and [votd_sidebar_widget] drop the verse into any post, page, or page-builder text module.

Key Features:

• Daily Bible Verses: A KJV verse of the day, chosen from a curated scripture library bundled right inside the plugin. No external verse service, no API key, no rate limits. The library is expanded with each release.
• Gutenberg Block Editor Ready: Native blocks for both layouts, rendered server-side so the verse is present in the page HTML rather than painted in afterwards by JavaScript.
• Multilingual Scripture: Serve the daily verse in over 100 languages, translated to keep the formal tone of the King James Version. Translations are requested once per language per day and cached locally.
• Animated Backgrounds: Display the verse over AI-generated animated WebP scenery. Choose animated only, static only, or a mix of both.
• Extensive Background Library: Several animated backgrounds and more than 60 static images, all served in Google’s efficient WebP format.
• Font Customization: 18 professional fonts, including Roboto, Open Sans, Inter, Lato, Source Sans Pro, Raleway, Montserrat, Nunito, EB Garamond, Merriweather, Playfair Display, Lora, Crimson Text, Roboto Mono, Source Code Pro, Fira Code, Poppins, and Quicksand.
• Self-Hosted Fonts: One click in Settings downloads every font into the plugin’s own folder, so no font request ever leaves your server.
• Privacy Clean: No visitor data collected, no analytics, no cookies set by the plugin, no third-party calls at all when the language is English.
• Dual Layouts: A full-width layout for prominent header placement and a compact layout for sidebars and footers.
• Public Domain Text: The King James Version is public domain, so there is no licensing restriction on displaying the verse of the day on your site.

Third-Party Service

The daily Bible verses themselves are bundled locally inside the plugin (data/verses.json) and require no external service. When the verse language is set to English (the default), this plugin makes no network requests for verse content. (The only other possible external request is the Google Fonts CDN, and only until fonts are self-hosted — see “Third-Party Fonts & Licenses” below.)

When a language other than English is selected, the plugin uses one third-party service:

Verse of the Day Widget for WP Translation API
– Translates the day’s KJV verse into the selected language. The request is made server-side by your WordPress site (never by your visitors’ browsers), at most once per language per day, and the result is cached locally until midnight.
– Data Sent: The verse text and the selected language code. No personal data, visitor data, or site data is sent, collected, or stored.
– Access: https://www.freesmartphoneapps.com/verseoftheday/api/translate-verse/
– Privacy Policy: https://freesmartphoneapps.com/privacy-policy-votd/ (Updated 2025-05-21).

OpenAI API
– This API is used to translate the Bible verses into over 100 languages, ensuring a multilingual experience.
– Personal Data: The API does not collect or store any personal data.
– Access: The API is accessed at https://api.openai.com/v1.
– Privacy Policy: Refer to OpenAI’s privacy policy here: https://openai.com/privacy.

Third-Party Fonts & Licenses

This plugin offers 18 Google Fonts as font-family options. When downloaded via Settings > “Download & Self-Host All Fonts,” the actual font files are saved to this plugin’s own /fonts/ directory (one subfolder per font, each including a LICENSE.txt). Both licenses below permit free use, modification, and self-hosted redistribution:

• Apache License, Version 2.0 (Roboto, Roboto Mono) — http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
• SIL Open Font License, Version 1.1 (Open Sans, Inter, Lato, Source Sans Pro, Raleway, Montserrat, Nunito, EB Garamond, Merriweather, Playfair Display, Lora, Crimson Text, Source Code Pro, Fira Code, Poppins, Quicksand) — https://scripts.sil.org/OFL