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PrayTime.me Bible Verses

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PrayTime.me Bible Verses

by M1Sh0u

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Description

We recently launched the website PrayTime.me with the aim of creating a community for believers and those seeking spiritual peace.

Wishing to make the Bible available directly on our website for free — and finding no viable way to do so using existing tools or plugins — we decided to develop this plugin to distribute at no cost to anyone running a site on this platform.

See it in action

Credit

Although the plugin is free, we kindly ask you to enable the CREDIT checkbox which is found in Settings, in order to recognize our effort to make this plugin available for free.

Donate

We thank you for your donation and wish you great success in your mission to share the Bible with everyone, free of charge.

Bible usage rights

Translation
Usage rights

BSB
Dedicated to the public domain on April 30, 2023. Publisher’s statement

ASV
Original 1901 text is public domain. Distribution notice

AKJV
American King James Version was dedicated to the public domain, allowing copying, selling and modifying. Dedication

CPDV
SacredBible states its text and files are public domain unless otherwise indicated. Original source

DBT
Historical Darby text is public domain. Distribution notice

DRB
Historical Douay-Rheims/Challoner text is public domain. Distribution notice

ERV
Historical English Revised Version is public domain; confirm the exact edition because other translations share that abbreviation.

JPS / WEY
JPS 1917 is public domain; historical Weymouth editions are public domain in the US. Later JPS translations have different rights. JPS explanation, Weymouth example

NHEB
Published as a public-domain translation. Publisher’s foreword

SLT
Julia E. Smith’s historical translation is public domain; verify the dataset contains that text.

WBT
Webster’s historical translation is public domain. Distribution notice

WEB
Text is public domain, but “World English Bible” is a trademark; the publisher asks that modified text use another name. Publisher’s terms

YLT
Historical Young’s Literal Translation is public domain. Distribution notice

Settings

Tools PrayTime.me Bible Verses Settings holds the site-wide defaults; /Shortcode attributes override them.

  • Translations: the default translation, which translations are enabled, whether translation descriptions are shown, and the chapter the reader opens at.
  • Appearance: accent colour, light / dark / automatic colour scheme, flowing or one-verse-per-line text, verse numbers, and stacked or side-by-side columns when comparing up to three translations.
  • Verse of the day: rotate through an editable list of references, or pick a random verse each day.
  • Reader links: addresses like /bible/web/john/3/ on a chosen reader page (needs a non-plain permalink structure).
  • Sharing: Copy and Share buttons on passages, with click-to-copy verse numbers.
  • Notes: let logged-in users write notes on verses. See “Verse notes” below.
  • Credit: an optional “This plugin is freely offered by PrayTime.me” line linking to PrayTime.me. It is off until the site owner enables it.
  • Data: keep the Bible texts and settings when the plugin is deleted.

Verse notes

When Verse notes is enabled in the settings, passages shown by [praytime_bible_verses] get a Notes section:

  • Logged-in users can write a note on any verse, choosing whether it is private (only they can see it) or public (every visitor can see it).
  • Authors can edit and delete their own notes. Users who can moderate comments (administrators and editors) can also delete public notes.
  • Logged-in users can vote public notes of other users up or down; the best voted notes are listed first.
  • Verses with notes show a small marker at their end with the number of notes. Hovering it previews the notes in a tooltip; clicking it opens a dropdown with all of the verse’s notes, where logged-in users also add and edit notes. For logged-in users every other verse shows a faint “+” marker to add the first note.
  • All notes of the passage are also listed after it, under a “Notes” button.
  • A note belongs to the verse, not to a translation, so it appears next to that verse in every translation.
  • Notes are loaded by the browser from the REST API (/wp-json/praytime-me-bible-verses/v1/notes), so cached pages still show current notes. When a user account is deleted, its notes and votes are deleted too.

Uninstall

Deleting the plugin from the Plugins screen drops its tables (including all verse notes and votes) and its settings, unless “Keep the Bible texts and settings” is enabled in the settings. Deactivating always keeps them.

This section describes how to install the plugin and get it working.

  1. You can install the plugin by uploading the .zip file in the plugins section of WordPress, or by adding the files to the folder /wp-content/plugins/praytime-me-bible-verses.

  2. Activate the plugin through the Plugins menu in WordPress.

    On activation the plugin creates three tables (wp_praybive_bibles, wp_praybive_books, wp_praybive_verses, using your table prefix) and imports the bundled SQL (data/bibles-data.txt) into them: 13 translations, 66 books and about 405,000 verses.

    The import is too large for a single request, so it runs in short batches in the background (WP-Cron). Progress is shown under Tools → PrayTime.me Bible Verses, where an administrator can also run it in the browser. On sites where WP-Cron is disabled, use the button there or run wp praytime-me-bible-verses import.

  3. Make sure the plugin data was successfully imported. To check that, you must go to the plugin settings Tools → PrayTime.me Bible Verses → Settings in the Import & usage tab. If the import was not done automatically, simply press the Run import now button to import the needed data for the plugin to work properly.
  4. Create or Edit a page/post where you want to display the Bible. Inside the page/post body add the /Shortcode [praytime_bible_verses].
  5. Visit your new/edited page/post to see the newly added Bible.
  6. Check the plugin settings for multiple render capabilities. To access the Settings page follow the path Tools → PrayTime.me Bible Verses → Settings

Demo

You can see a live demo on our website on the Bible page or in the WordPress Playground

Usage

The following /Shortcodes can be used to display different kind of verses, or chapters of the Bible Translations

  • [praytime_bible_verses] — a reader with translation, book and chapter pickers, previous/next chapter links, and a search button that finds verses in the selected translation(s). Results list the matching verses with the search words highlighted; each links to its verse in the chapter. Every word must appear in a verse; put words in quotes to search for an exact phrase.
  • [praytime_bible_verses reference="John 3:16"] — a single verse in the default translation (BSB unless changed in the settings).
  • [praytime_bible_verses reference="Psalm 23" bible="WEB"] — a whole chapter.
  • [praytime_bible_verses reference="Romans 8:28-30" bible="WEB,YLT,ASV"] — translations side by side.
  • [praytime_bible_verses reference="Genesis 1:1" bible="all"] — every translation.
  • [praytime_bible_verses book="John" chapter="1" verses="1-5"] — the same as reference, as separate attributes.
  • [praytime_bible_verses reference="John 1" browse="yes"] — the reader, opened at a chosen chapter.
  • [praytime_verse_of_the_day] — a verse that changes every day; also accepts bible and show_info.
  • show_info="no" / show_info="yes" — hides or shows the translation descriptions, overriding the setting.

Translations (bible="…"): BSB, ASV, AKJV, CPDV, DBT, DRB, ERV, JPS / WEY, NHEB, SLT, WBT, WEB, YLT.

For developers: verse provider API

Other plugins (for example a bridge that posts a daily verse to a community plugin) can read verses as structured data through three filters. They are read-only: nothing is rendered, saved or scheduled. Pass null as the value, so the result stays null when this plugin is not active.

  1. Method definition: apply_filters( 'praybive_get_verse', null, $args ) — a passage. $args:
  • reference (required) — John 3:16, John 3:16-18 or Psalm 23.
  • translation — a code such as WEB; empty means the default translation. Must be enabled in the settings.
  • max_verses — refuse longer passages (0, the default, means no limit). Useful for user-typed commands.
  1. Method definition: apply_filters( 'praybive_get_verse_of_the_day', null, $args ) — the verse the [praytime_verse_of_the_day] shortcode shows for a date, following its settings. $args:
  • date — Y-m-d; empty means today in timezone.
  • timezone — a PHP timezone such as Europe/Bucharest; empty means the site timezone.
  • translation — empty means the verse of the day translation.

Both return either a WP_Error or this array (date only for the verse of the day):

array(
    'api_version' => 1,
    'reference'   => 'John 3:16-17',
    'book'        => 'John',
    'chapter'     => 3,
    'verse_start' => 16,
    'verse_end'   => 17,
    'text'        => 'For God so loved the world, … For God sent not his Son …',
    'verses'      => array( array( 'number' => 16, 'text' => '…' ), array( 'number' => 17, 'text' => '…' ) ),
    'translation' => 'WEB',
    'attribution' => 'World English Bible - https://worldenglish.bible/',
    'url'         => 'https://example.com/bible/?praybive_bible=web&praybive_book=43&praybive_chapter=3',
    'hash'        => 'md5 of translation, reference and text',
    'date'        => '2026-10-09',
)
  • attribution is the translation’s credit line; show it next to the text.
  • url links to the chapter on the reader page chosen in the settings, or is empty when none is chosen.
  • hash is stable for the same translation, reference and text, so it can be stored to avoid posting a verse twice.

Error codes: praybive_not_ready (the import has not finished), praybive_unknown_translation, praybive_invalid_reference, praybive_not_found, praybive_too_long, praybive_invalid_date, praybive_invalid_timezone.

  1. Method definition: apply_filters( 'praybive_get_translations', null ) lists the enabled translations as array( 'code' => 'WEB', 'attribution' => '…', 'is_default' => true ) items, for a settings screen. It is empty until the import has finished.

The praybive_api_loaded action fires on plugins_loaded with the API version (1). The version only changes if the returned arrays change in a way that could break callers.

  1. How to insert the Shortcode into the page editor

    How to insert the Shortcode into the page editor

  2. Main look and feel of the plugin

    Main look and feel of the plugin

  3. Bible Translation selector

    Bible Translation selector

  4. Import & Usage information

    Import & Usage information

  5. Settings - Screenshot 1

    Settings - Screenshot 1

  6. Settings - Screenshot 2

    Settings - Screenshot 2

1.2.2

Added the youtube video link to the readme file.

1.2.1

Added the ability to search verses in the current selected translation.

1.2.0

Added the ability to add verse notes by the logged-in user.

  • Logged-in users can write a note on any verse, choosing whether it is private (only they can see it) or public (every visitor can see it).
  • Authors can edit and delete their own notes. Users who can moderate comments (administrators and editors) can also delete public notes.
  • Logged-in users can vote public notes of other users up or down; the best voted notes are listed first.
  • Verses with notes show a small marker at their end with the number of notes. Hovering it previews the notes in a tooltip; clicking it opens a dropdown with all of the verse’s notes, where logged-in users also add and edit notes. For logged-in users every other verse shows a faint “+” marker to add the first note.
  • All notes of the passage are also listed after it, under a “Notes” button.
  • A note belongs to the verse, not to a translation, so it appears next to that verse in every translation.
  • Notes are loaded by the browser from the REST API (/wp-json/praytime-me-bible-verses/v1/notes), so cached pages still show current notes. When a user account is deleted, its notes and votes are deleted too.

1.1.3

Fixed readme file

1.1.2

  • Added the possibility to increase/decrease the font size
  • Added a button to see the bible on fullscreen

1.1.1

  • Removed KJV Translation, since it is protected in UK by copyright law

1.1.0

  • Added the developers API for other plugins to be able to read verses as structured data through three filters
  • Added bible usage rights

1.0.3 – 1.0.5

Small readme changes for better understanding of the plugin

1.0.2

Added a screenshot about how to install the plugin in the page editor

1.0.1

Updated the readme file by adding Changelog and the Installation tab

1.0.0

First release

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