Dynamic Month & Year into Posts is a free WordPress plugin that keeps dates in your content permanently current: shortcodes like [year] and [monthyear] render the live value everywhere they appear, so titles like “Best WordPress Themes 2026” update themselves every January 1 without anyone touching the post.
This documentation hub covers version 1.8.0, tested up to WordPress 7.0. The plugin runs on this site; every “2026” you see in my evergreen titles is a shortcode doing its job.
What the plugin provides
- Shortcodes: year, month, date, season, age, days-until and more, all localized via
wp_date()in the site timezone, covered in the shortcode reference - Gutenberg blocks: Dynamic Date, Live Countdown, Published Date, and Modified Date blocks, plus 7 ready-made block patterns
- Block Bindings: a
dmyip/datesource so core Paragraph and Heading blocks can render dynamic dates without shortcodes (WordPress 6.5+) - Integrations: Rank Math, Yoast, SEOPress, Elementor, and Bricks Builder, so shortcodes work in SEO titles, meta descriptions, and builder content
- Developer surface: a public REST API, WP-CLI commands, and filters documented in the developer reference
Requirements and compatibility
WordPress 6.5 or newer and PHP 7.4 or newer. Version 1.7.2 added Bricks Builder integration and the Published/Modified Date blocks; 1.7.3 fixed legacy-path edge cases; 1.7.4 confirms compatibility through WordPress 7.0. Version 1.8.0 rebuilds the Live Countdown block (recurring, cache-aware), moves every date calculation to the site timezone, and raises the minimum WordPress version to 6.5. The full changelog ships with the plugin.
Where to start
Install from WordPress.org, then start with the shortcode reference for the classic workflow or the Gutenberg blocks lesson for the block-native one. The use-case examples show the patterns I actually use in production, including the evergreen-title pattern that motivated the plugin.