I published three articles between November 9 and 14, 2025. All three articles were published last week in part because of things I published (or did not publish) on the same day in prior years.
- November 9: Investigating John Salley’s Return to Detroit
I had originally planned to publish this article on November 10. However, when I saw that I had never published an article on November 9 despite having had five opportunities to do so, I decided to make history. - November 13: Fighting Headlights With EBD Blue 360 Lenses
I had published a review of driving glasses on November 13, 2021. While I do not drive, I was test-driving the driving glasses to protect my eyes from bright headlights on evening walks. I decided to review a second pair of glasses that I acquired to shield my eyes from the headlights four years to the day of the first review. - November 14: Kelly, Fisher, and College Football Coach Buyouts
On November 14, 2023, I wrote about a very expensive college football coach firing and buyout at Texas A&M. Exactly two years later, I wrote about an expensive firing and buyout at LSU (which has some interesting links to the 2023 A&M story).
The reason I knew about these anniversaries is a WordPress plugin called Years Ago Today. Years Ago Today is developed by Scott Reilly (coffee2code on GitHub). The source code is available on GitHub and the plugin can be installed from the official WordPress plugin repository. Additional information about the plugin’s performance and version history is available on PluginTests.
Years Ago Today is a very simple plugin which adds a widget to the WordPress admin dashboard showing posts that were published on the current day in previous years. See a screenshot of my dashboard widget on November 14, 2025, below:
It also handles cases where more than one post was published on the current day in previous years.
The plugin can optionally send emails with posts published on the current day in previous years, but I have not tested that feature.
Years Ago Today only works in the admin area. It does not provide any widgets or shortcodes to show posts to visitors who do not access the admin area.
I have been using Years Ago Today for a bit more than a year. I have been publishing articles on The New Leaf Journal since April 2020, so it is fun to see articles published on “this day” in previous years. In some cases, such as the three articles I noted in the introduction, Years Ago Today gives me ideas for new posts on The New Leaf Journal or The Emu Café Social. The plugin does not add its own options to WordPress, much less tables, so it should have little-to-no effect on site performance (I have not noticed any effect).
There is one improvement I would like to see in Years Ago Today without changing its essential purpose. By default, it only shows regular posts published in previous years. I have published a good number of posts in two custom post type categories. Years Ago Today should have a toggle to include custom post type posts in its list.
Years Ago Today works as advertised. I like being reminded of posts I wrote in previous years. These old posts sometimes inspire new posts. It is a neat tool for me because I regularly try to connect new posts to old. It is not a plugin for every WordPress site, but it is worth a look for webmasters who post often and look for inspiration in their earlier writing.
