Herodotus – On This Day
List layout with featured images and anniversary counters, alongside the compact sidebar layout. Colors and tags customized with the Pro add-on.
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
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
- Install and activate Herodotus.
- Create an event under Herodotus – On This Day and set its day, month and historical year. All three fields are required.
- 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.