WordPress - Collapsible Archives with the Clean Archives Reloaded Plugin

One of the problems with WordPress archives listed by month in the sidebar is that the list becomes really long when you have been blogging for a long time. Siel at green LA girl has been blogging since July 2005 and had removed her archive list from the front page sidebar because it had become so unwieldy.

I investigated a variety of solutions and Siel decided to use the Clean Archives Reloaded plugin, which creates a collapsible list or archived entries on an archive page rather than listing them in the sidebar.

Take a second to look at how the plugin works on Siel’s site and then come back and follow the installation instructions.

To install and set this plugin up on your site do the following:

1. Download the plugin and extract the zip file. Make sure to keep the file structure intact.
2. Upload the extracted directory to the plugins folder in your WordPress installation.
3. Activate the plugin
4. You can create a new post or page for your archives. If you use a page, you can use your default template or, especially motivated, you can create a new template for archives.
5. On the post or page, add the following code.

[cleanarchivesreloaded]

The plugin also has code for a post count, which you add if you want but it isn’t necessary.

[cartotalposts]

Then add a link to your archives in the sidebar. The permalink is listed below the title on the post or page that you just created. The link can say Archives, give a date range, say history of this site, or whatever you want as long it is clear that it is the archives.

That’s all there is to it. If you didn’t take a look at green LA girl’s archives at the beginning of this article, here’s another link. They look great, provide more information than standard archives, and the collapsible part of this is really cool. Plus, it is super easy to set-up.

I’m considering adding this to my own site. Since I’ve only been blogging since May, it really isn’t an issue yet, but it won’t take long before the list becomes long and starts to annoy me, especially since I’m not that fond of chronological archives.

photo credit: dublincitypubliclibraries

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