The Word Widget for WordPress

A WordPress plugin that shows "The Word" in a widget: two selected Bible verses for each day, available in over 10 languages. The plugin lets you select the Bible edition in the WordPress dashboard, gets the verses for the selected Bible edition and the current day remotely from bible2.net and shows them in a WordPress widget area.

On wordpress.org: The Word Widget

Bible Editions Available: see the page of available .twd files.

Author: Helmut Steeb (hs2013 at bible2.net)

Version: 0.9 (2021-07-17)

Project Bible 2.0 collects crossreferences between selected Bible verses, formats the verses nicely as "sayings" and publishes two crossreferenced verses for each day of the year as a ".twd" file. A .twd file contains sayings of one Bible edition for one year.

Got any questions? Just contact me.

God's Word shall not return to Him empty, but it shall accomplish that which He purposes (Is. 55:11)!

Installation

1. unpack the zip file into your WordPress plugin folder /wp-content/plugins/;
2. in the WordPress admin area, in Plugins | Installed Plugins, activate the plugin;
3. in the WordPress admin area, in Appearance | Widgets, put the widget "The Word" into one of your widget areas;
4. within "The Word" widget, click into the box labelled "The Word", a combobox shows up
5. in the combobox, select the desired Bible edition
6. to see a preview, click outside the area labelled "The Word" (e.g. right to the top toolbar)
7. to apply the change to your site, click the "Update" button (previously: "Save" button) top-right in the "Widgets" window.

... voilà your page should show The Word of the day from the selected Bible edition!

Adapt the layout

The current plugin version does not provide layout adaptation directly in the WordPress dashboard.

Experts who have access to the layout definition of the active WordPress theme (typically wp-content/themes//style.css) can add some stylesheet (CSS) classes to the theme. The widget output uses the following CSS classes:

• TheWord: div around all other elements
• TL: the title line
• Parol: the two Bible sayings (from 1 - 3 verses each)
• IL: the optional intro line (like "Paul writes:")
• L: the multi-line Bible text. In a narrow widget area, the text may look better with line-breaks suppressed.
• SL: the "source" line (Bible reference)

An example css file is included in the plugin zip file. It includes "responsive" CSS to either show the verses with line breaks (on a wider display) or without the line breaks (on a smaller display). You may need to adapt the rules, depending on the actual width of your widget area.

What will happen at the end of the year?

Usually the widget will just work in the year to come. But it might happen that the publisher of your selected Bible edition no more provides the verses for the year to come. In this case, the widget will just remain empty.

Changes

0.9 (2021-07-17)

• for use in a WP 5.8 Legacy Widget Block, moved the static method html from includes/admin-form.php into the-word-widget.php
• dropped the empty the-word-widget-admin.php
• tested with PHP 7.4.3 and WordPress 5.8 RC4

0.8 (2019-02-20)

• use anonymous function (available since PHP 5.3.0) instead of create_function (deprecated in PHP 7.2)
• tested with PHP 7.2.15 and WordPress 5.1 RC2

still 0.7 (2017-12-04)

• tested up to WordPress 4.9.1

 0.7 (2017-06-03)

• use https protocol to access bible2.net
• tested up to WordPress 4.8

0.6 (2016-08-15)

• if the SimpleXML module is missing, the widget configuration form shows a detailed info.

0.5 (2016-04-06)

• if the widget form (for admin) fails to retrieve the list of Bible editions from bible2.net, the form shows a detailed log of its actions, and some environment info (allow_url_fopen, php_version(), $wp_version, $required_php_version).

0.4 (2014-12-23)

• on restricted server configurations, the plugin now falls back to a safer method to retrieve data from bible2.net (if PHP setting allow_url_fopen=Off, simplexml_load_file fails, then the plugin uses the WordPress method wg_remote_get)

0.3 (2014-02-15)

• the widget does not store a .twd file per year but uses the daily online service

0.2 (2014-02-10)

• the widget form (for admin) retrieves the list of Bible editions from bible2.net,
• ... lets admin select the Bible edition
• ... and retrieves The Word .twd file for the selected Bible edition from bible2.net.
• the widget shows The Word from the Bible edition selected in the widget form.

0.1 (2014-01-25)

• initial version

2023-01-03 • HSteeb • updated: 2026-08-21