Administration: Always display the On This Day dashboard widget

[i-am-chitti]

Trac ticket

https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/65647

Problem

The On This Day dashboard widget is hidden with the core hidden class when there are no posts to show for the current calendar day. This creates inconsistent, confusing behavior:

• The widget is not visible on the dashboard, but its Screen Options checkbox is still checked — so the reported state disagrees with what's actually shown.
• Unchecking and re-checking the option reveals the widget, because postbox.js calls jQuery's .show(), which injects an inline display: block that overrides the .hidden class.

The root cause is two independent hide mechanisms competing: a server-side hidden class vs. the persisted per-user Screen Options preference.

Fix

Take the "always show" approach (option 1 from the ticket):

• Remove the postbox_classes_dashboard_wp_dashboard_on_this_day filter and the wp_dashboard_on_this_day_postbox_classes() function that added the hidden class.
• The widget is now always registered and always visible. When there are no matching posts, the existing placeholder — "No posts were published on this day in previous years." — is shown.
• Hiding is deferred entirely to Screen Options, which persists correctly and keeps the checkbox state consistent with on-screen visibility.

This is consistent with other always-registered dashboard widgets (e.g. Activity, At a Glance) and avoids !important CSS hacks.

Testing instructions

1. Ensure there are no published posts dated on today's month/day in a previous year (a recent install satisfies this by default).
2. Visit the Dashboard.
3. Before this change: the widget is not visible, yet "On This Day" is checked in Screen Options; unchecking and re-checking reveals it.
4. After this change: the widget is always visible and shows the placeholder message; the Screen Options checkbox state matches its visibility. Unchecking hides it and the preference persists across reloads.

Screenshots

Before

After

Use of AI Tools

AI assistance: Yes
Tool(s): Claude Code
Model(s): Opus 4.8
Used for: update unit tests

[github-actions]

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Props iamchitti, wildworks, joedolson, mukesh27, annezazu.

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[github-actions]

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[mukeshpanchal27]

Thanks @i-am-chitti for the PR!

Overall look solid to me.

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

This PR updates the “On This Day” Dashboard widget behavior so it is always displayed (and therefore consistently represented in Screen Options), showing an existing placeholder message when there are no matching posts for the current calendar day.

Changes:

• Removes the postbox-class filter mechanism that previously added the core hidden class when there were no matching posts.
• Updates the widget setup/rendering documentation and inline comments to reflect the “always visible; placeholder when empty” behavior.
• Updates PHPUnit tests by removing coverage that asserted the old “hide when empty” behavior.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 2 out of 2 changed files in this pull request and generated 1 comment.

File	Description
tests/phpunit/tests/admin/wpDashboardOnThisDay.php	Updates tests to stop asserting the removed postbox-class filter behavior.
src/wp-admin/includes/dashboard-on-this-day.php	Removes the hidden-class filter and updates documentation/comments to match always-visible behavior.

---

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[t-hamano]

I have made two changes to this PR. It is ready for re-review.

• dc0aea5: Resolve conflicts.
• d218c56: Remove the wp_dashboard_on_this_day_setup function. This is because it is now merely a wrapper for wp_add_dashboard_widget and is deemed to have no further purpose.

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 3 out of 3 changed files in this pull request and generated no new comments.

Comments suppressed due to low confidence (2)

tests/phpunit/tests/admin/wpDashboardOnThisDay.php:103

• The PR changes how the widget is registered (now directly in wp_dashboard_setup()) and removes the postbox class filter, but there is no test exercising the updated registration path. Adding a small integration-style test that calls wp_dashboard_setup() would cover the regression reported in #65647 (widget always registered/visible via Screen Options, and no hidden postbox filter).

	/**
	 * @ticket 65116
	 *
	 * @covers ::_wp_dashboard_on_this_day_date_query_clause
	 */
	public function test_get_date_query_clause_includes_february_29_on_february_28_in_non_leap_year() {

src/wp-admin/includes/dashboard-on-this-day.php:17

• Removing wp_dashboard_on_this_day_setup() entirely is a backward-compatibility break for any code that might have called it since it was introduced in 7.1.0. Consider keeping it as a thin wrapper that only registers the widget (without adding any hidden class behavior), so existing callers don’t fatally error while still achieving the “always show” behavior.

/**
 * Renders the On This Day dashboard widget.
 *
 * Outputs the matching posts grouped by publication year, newest year first.
 *
 * @since 7.1.0
 */
function wp_dashboard_on_this_day() {

[t-hamano]

I've been thinking about this, and I'm leaning towards supporting this PR that always displays the On This Day widget.

@m suggested hiding the On This Day widget entirely when there's no content to display. However, implementing this presents some tricky challenges. A significant issue is that the widget might be visually absent, yet its checkbox in the Screen Options would still appear.

While we can hide the "On This Day" checkbox within Screen Options, it requires a somewhat convoluted approach.

Furthermore, the current behavior might be perceived as a bug. Please refer to this livestream by Ryan. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2821389287?t=42m35s

@annezazu @joedolson, I plan to move forward with this PR, what are your thoughts?

[annezazu]

Thanks for surfacing this. I agree in having it always on, both to avoid technical concerns and to prevent confusion around the checkbox problem. I can see how that would be confusing. Since this means the empty state will be more readily visible, perhaps we can spruce it up from this:

For example, here's what site health shows:

Maybe something like this, where we link to "Add post"?

@WordPress/gutenberg-design for any empty state thoughts here :)

[joedolson]

I agree with this. Ultimately, hiding it creates a lot of technical problems that are largely unnecessary, and creates a user experience that's potentially confusing.

I feel like the text should be more invitational; something like "You haven't published a post on this day before. Write one now, and be reminded about it next year!"

But I think getting some copy work on this would be good; and we need to nail that down by RC, for translators sakes.

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[joedolson]

Barring polish on the text, I think that this is ready to go. I think it would be fine to commit with the text suggested by @annezazu, and continue to discuss; but if anybody has suggestions on the text that we can land on before RC 1, that would be great.