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.
For the complete version history (all releases), see the readme.txt revision log:
https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/verse-of-the-day-widget-for-wp/trunk/readme.txt
8.10.0 - (2026-09-27)
- Improved (Accessibility): The "Read full verse" control is now a real button, and the full verse opens in a native modal dialog. Keyboard focus stays inside the dialog while it is open, the rest of the page is locked, Escape or a click outside closes it, and focus returns to the button afterwards. Previously the page behind the window could still be reached with the Tab key.
- Improved (Accessibility): Animated backgrounds now have a pause and play button in the corner of the widget, as WCAG 2.2.2 requires for motion that loops for more than five seconds. Visitors whose device is set to reduce motion start on a still frame, and the lift effect on hover is turned off for them.
- Fixed (Accessibility): Screen readers no longer announce the verse as a live update or stop on it as if it were a control, and the header widget's region is now labelled "Verse of the Day" instead of repeating the whole verse as its name.
- Fixed (Accessibility): The dark band behind the verse in the header layout is slightly stronger at its right edge, so white text stays above the WCAG contrast minimum on bright sky and beach backgrounds.
- Fixed (Display): Two copies of the same widget on one page shared the same dialog, so "Read full verse" in the second copy could open the first one's window. Each copy now has its own.
- New (Block Editor): The Header block can be set to wide or full width, and the Sidebar block can be aligned left, center or right. Both blocks now have margin and padding controls and an HTML anchor field, and the "Additional CSS class(es)" setting now takes effect on the front end.
- Improved (Performance): On classic themes, when the widget is in a sidebar or in the page's own content, its stylesheet now loads in the page head, so the widget no longer appears unstyled for a moment while the page loads.
- Improved (Translation): The "Read full verse", "Verse of the Day" and close button labels, and the new pause button label, can now be translated.
- Changed (Admin): Redesigned review prompt. It is now a card in the style of the block editor, with John 3:16 over one of the widget's own Caribbean animations, and it follows the admin color scheme. Choosing an option no longer reloads the page, and the close button now remembers the choice; previously the prompt came back on the next page load.
- Changed (Admin): Redesigned getting-started notice in the same card style, with a preview of today's verse over a Caribbean animation. The steps now match your theme: on block themes, which have no Widgets screen, it points to the Verse of the Day block and the Site Editor instead of a Widgets page that could not be used. The shortcode has a one-click Copy button, and the close button now remembers that the notice was dismissed; previously it came back on the next page load.
8.9.11 - (2026-09-16)
- Fixed (Display): On themes that do not apply a site-wide "border-box" sizing rule, which includes block themes such as Twenty Twenty-Five, the verse panel was drawn wider than the background image it sits on. The panel was set to the full width of its container and then had its inner spacing added on top, so the extra width spilled past the right edge, where the background image cut it off. The verse ran across fewer, longer lines, and the end of each line and the right-hand spacing were hidden, while the left side looked normal. Themes such as Astra apply that sizing rule themselves, which is why the problem did not appear there. The widget now sets its own sizing instead of relying on the theme, so the verse wraps and centers the same way on every theme. This affected both the header and sidebar layouts, whether placed as a block, a classic widget, or a shortcode.
- Improved (Theme Compatibility): The plugin stylesheet no longer adds anything to the page's root element. The widget's color and shadow settings are now defined on the widget containers themselves, and the badge styles and the print rule that hides the "Read full verse" link now apply only inside the widgets. Your theme's own styling is left entirely alone. No visible change to the widget.
- Improved (Documentation): The short description, feature list, installation steps, and FAQ now refer to the blocks as Gutenberg blocks, so site owners searching for Gutenberg support can find them. The FAQ entry on block themes also explains that block themes have no Appearance > Widgets screen, and that the blocks or a Shortcode block should be used there instead.
8.9.9 - (2026-09-13)
- Added (Block Editor): The two blocks are now documented and discoverable. "Verse of the Day Header" and "Verse of the Day Sidebar" can be searched for in the block inserter by terms such as "verse of the day," "daily bible verse," "scripture," and "devotional," and each block now carries a description explaining which layout it inserts. The blocks themselves are unchanged and still render server-side.
- Added (Plugin Requirements): The plugin now declares its minimum WordPress version (6.6) and minimum PHP version (7.4) in its main plugin file, so WordPress can warn you before an incompatible install or update rather than after. Sites already meeting those versions are unaffected.
- Added (Plugin Header): Declared the plugin's text domain, plugin URI, and author URI in the main plugin file. Declaring the text domain explicitly keeps translated strings loading correctly rather than relying on WordPress inferring it from the folder name.
- Added (Update Notice): Releases now include an upgrade notice, so the one-line summary of what a release does is visible on your Plugins screen before you click update.
- Improved (Documentation): The Frequently Asked Questions section has been expanded from three entries to fourteen, covering block theme and full site editing support, page builder compatibility, whether an API key or account is needed, which translation is used, when the verse changes and in which timezone, what data is and is not sent, self-hosted fonts, and use on church and ministry sites.
- Improved (Documentation): Installation instructions now cover all three placement methods separately (block, classic widget, shortcode). The FAQ answer on displaying the verse now leads with the current
[votd_header_widget] and [votd_sidebar_widget] shortcodes; the legacy [votd_verse_of_the_day_widget_for_wp] shortcode continues to work and is still documented for existing installs.
- Improved (Documentation): Screenshot captions rewritten to describe what each image shows, and the plugin description now states the licensing and privacy position plainly: the King James Version text is public domain, no account or API key is required, and the plugin sets no cookies and collects no visitor data.
For older releases, see changelog.txt.