Possible to edit custom date field and display?

Question

I would like my site to show the x time ago on posts but we also have lots of events listed that are effected by the sitewide change and are also showing x time ago dates too even if they are in the future.

We have ACF pro installed on our site and we have created a custom date field for each post that we can print onto the frontpage underneath each post they are related to.

Is there a way to manipulate the field to show x time ago as opposed to just showing the time and date?

Thanks

Answer 1

Editing the theme is a good way to get this done, if it's a theme with updates from someone else I would make a child theme to prevent your changes being overwritten: https://developer.wordpress.org/themes/advanced-topics/child-themes/

Another option is to make a plugin that utilizes a shortcode that allows any Wordpress editor to just plug that shortcode into the Wordpress page editor. There might be a plugin that already does this, search?

Wherever you need the date changed you could add this code in replacement:

<?php
$acfCustomDate = strtotime(get_field('custom_date'));
$currentDate = strtotime(getdate());

$secsAgo = $currentDate - $acfCustomDate;// == strtotime gives seconds
$daysAgo = $secsAgo / 86400;

if($daysAgo > 0)
    echo "Posted $daysAgo days ago";
else
    echo "Posted $daysAgo days in the future!";