This plugin cycles a stylesheet for each day and season of the Liturgical year.
Churches that follow the liturgy change their sanctuary aesthetics according to the liturgical date or season. This plugin uses CSS to allow these same changes to be made to a website’s theme. The Liturgical Year Themes Wordpress plugin uses the date() and easter_days() php functions to calculate the current liturgical day or season. A correlating CSS file is loaded which allows the designer to override their default theme with one fitting for the current time on the Christian calendar. The plugin also provides the option of printing the day or season’s title in the document markup. The Liturgical Year Themes plugin is targeted at church websites, but can also be useful for journals and blogs that value the liturgy.
*Currently this plugin follows the Liturgical year practiced by western churches. In the future I may include an option to select the eastern liturgical calendar as an alternative.
Features
- Make your website’s appearance consistent with the movements of the liturgical year.
- Print the title of the current liturgical day or season.
Download
Installation
- Upload the /liturgical-year-themes/ folder to your blog’s plugins folder (usually /wp-content/plugins/) and activate it.
- Upload the /liturgy/ folder into your current theme directory (usually /wp-content/themes/your-themes-name/).
- Add
<?php get_liturgical_time(); ?>to your header template file after the style.css reference and before the closing</head>tag. - Edit the stylesheets in the /liturgy/ directory to override your theme’s default styles.
Included CSS files
advent.css
third-week-of-advent.css
christmas-eve.css
christmas.css
epiphany.css
after-epiphany.css
transfiguration.css
ash-wednesday.css
lent.css
palm-sunday.css
maundy-thursday.css
good-friday.css
holy-saturday.css
resurrection-sunday.css
easter.css
eastertide.css
ascension.css
pentecost.css
trinity-sunday.css
ordinary-time.css
all-saints-day.css
christ-the-king.css
*editing the file names will require editing the corresponding reference in the plugin function.
Optional
you can use <?php get_liturgical_time('title'); ?> to print the date or season title (you will need to wrap it in your own html tag) and <?php get_liturgical_time('name') ?> to print a dashed referenced suitable for file names.
How It Works
Advent days and seasons are calculated according to their fixed calendar dates. Easter days and seasons are calculated using the php function easter_days() which provides the number of days between March 21 and Easter, after which all of the Easter dates and seasons can be derived. Fixed calendar dates include an additional test to allow for the possibility of leap year.
Feedback
This plugin is still very much a work in progress so I would love any comments, criticisms, or suggestions on how it can be improved. I plan on releasing a more mature version which will include an admin menu to control options and preferences sometime before the Season of Lent.
[...] website based on the liturgical calendar, Scott Lenger has up on his site a Wordpress plugin to do exactly that. I can’t decide if that’s good or [...]
Hearken to my words, Great Scott!
Thou hast made an incredible WordPress theme. Verily, it rocketh mightily, and with a sacred vengeance against those things carnal, mundane and bewitching…
I reckon there’s a good purpose for times and seasons reminding us of Our Father…eh? Perhaps the church had to do something like this because we’ve lost the ability to use nature to inform us of the “times and seasons”?
Just a thought.
Hey, thanks again.
EM
I like the concept of the program you have written but my own site would look funny in “violet.” Now, what would be a great help is a calendar that has those dates that can be posted on a site.
Scott, this is absolutely fantastic. If you don’t mind I’m going to have a go at modifying this to be more precise over the next few weeks through Advent, bringing up on my blog all the Saints Days and O Sapientia references, together with a connected picture. Do you want a copy of my updated plugin php file?
@George Developing a full calendar is beyond the scope of this plugin, but incorporating what I’ve done to work with an existing calendar plugin is worth considering.
@Peter Thanks for the compliment. By all means you are encouraged to improve upon the plugin. I’ll be looking forward to what you come up with.
Happy New Year!!!
If you pop over to my website (www.peter-ould.net) today or tomorrow you’ll see this plugin altered with extra liturgical dates, and then used to call not only a picture for the day but also the relevant collect.
What do we think?
I’ve done some more work on this to allow a collect to be added into the main php file. I now have a setup on my site where the sidebar calls the day name, the title and the collect and also an appropriate picture.
I think the next step would be to write an interface to the wordpress SQL database to allow the collect and title to be stored on the db and for extra days to be added. I also need to figure out how to calculate days after Christmas and specifically Sundays before Lent. At the moment I am calling the exact day number for Sundays in January.