Like most people that work with the web, there always seems a nicer way to display information to the screen. I really liked the way that Jon Hicks displays his blog archive list, so here is a simple plugin that will do the same thing for you.

Installation

1. Download arl_hicksdesign_archives.zip
2. Unzip the file to your local machine somewhere
3. Upload the arl_hicksdesign_archives.php into your plugins folder (normally: /wp-content/plugins/)
4. Enable the plugin via your administration console
5. Edit your appropriate WordPress template file (normally: /wp-content/themes/<theme_name>/archives.php) and add a call to arl_hicksdesign_archives()

Links

• Initial Post: Hicksdesign Style Archives
• Download: arl_hicksdesign_archives.zip
• Source: arl_hicksdesign_archives.phps

Notes

Due to the way that WordPress handles permalinks, any plugin author is required to call the get_permalink() function to retrieve the permalink for a post. With that in mind, it means that using this plugin will generate at least one SQL query per post listed.

If you are using a shared hosting environment which has its resources stretched, implementing this plugin for your archives might mean that you’ll have a slower than normal render time. At the time of writing this, my archives page (all of it, not just the plugin) issues approximately 150 SQL statements, taking about 0.8 seconds to render. In most instances, I’m sure you won’t notice any performance issues but your mileage might vary depending on the quality of your hosting.

ChangeSet

• 2007-01-27:
  • Fixed a bug in the SQL which was displaying pages as well as posts
  • Changed SQL to use $wpdb variable instead of directly accessing the tables
• 2006-05-01:
  • Implemented get_permalink() to fix bug
  • Implemented get_month_link() to fix potential bug
• 2006-04-29: Fixed spelling mistake in plugin name, arl_hicksdesign_archives().
• 2006-04-26: Initial release.