Creating archives section for your WordPress powered weblog is quite simple really. In three simple steps, I’ll show you how to get a decent archives page up and running. And it really doesn’t matter what theme you prefer to use. But, because some themes have narrow content width, and / or if they do not enclose layout related XHTML markup entirely within the theme’s header and footer templates, you may have to tweak XHTML within the download file (I have for this tutorial) or add a bit of styling to your CSS file, in addition, to make it “fit” within.

A quick note: If your theme gives you an archives page by default (like K2, for example), then don’t bother with the rest of this post. This quick tutorial essentially tries the same thing, albeit manually.

This is meant to be a “cut the bullshit and get on with it” tutorial, so without mincing anymore words, here we go:

Step 1: Download Arnaud Froment’s very awesome extended live archive plugin and upload to your plugins folder (follow instructions given in the plugin’s simple documentation).

Step 2: Download this file and rename it to archives.php. Upload archives.php to your active theme folder. (If you’re using Plain Vanilla, upload this file to Plain Vanilla theme folder.). Update: Download file has been updated now without the search form. Should work for all those themes that do not come with the native searchform.php.

Step 3: Create a page called archives (or whatever you want to call it) and select the Page template “Archives template” created in step 2 to be used for this page. Do not write anything in the write area of this page. It should be essentially left blank. That’s because everything that you want to display on an archives page is already in the template, archives.php—in the form of a code. Activate the plugin.

That’s it. Now, navigate to your archives page and you should be seeing it with all your old entries listed. You can further fine-tune certain things of your archives page using the plugin options under Dashboard > Options.

A word of wisdom: There are lots of ways—even the simple command line ones—to show your older posts or providing your visitors an easier way to navigate your blog for entries. A lot of us have been suckers for the cool factor, including yours truly. But the fact is, the archives page should first serve essentially as what it’s supposed to function as. So, don’t add things that you don’t intend to use (Things that fall under this type: tags, technorati / tag cloud, recent comments, etc). Keep it simple, usable.

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