WordPress Plugin: Hicksdesign Style Archives

The Hicksdesign Style Archives plugin now has a permanent URL.

Looking for a better way of displaying your blog archive list than a list of links to your monthly archive pages? There are many ways to display an archive list of posts, most common is a series of links to your ‘monthly archive’ pages. While perfectly functional, it just wasn’t working for me.

After looking around, I really liked the way that Jon Hicks displays his blog archive list. Using Jon’s method gives a little more substance to an otherwise fairly sparse page and the post titles break up the page nicely with their varying length.

Usage

  1. Download arl_hicksdesign_archives.zip
  2. Unzip the file locally
  3. Upload 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 and add a call to arl_hicksdesign_archives()

Download

Zip: arl_hicksdesign_archives.zip
Source: arl_hicksdesign_archives.phps

ChangeSet

  • 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.

10 thoughts on “WordPress Plugin: Hicksdesign Style Archives

  1. I really like this plugin.
    However I’m having problems making it display on a page I created for archives.
    How did you call it?

    I can’t get them to display. :-(

    Hope you can help!

  2. You may need to update your source code (or the instructions) – the function is called arl_hickdesign_archives() (note the singular hick, rather than a collection of hicks!)

  3. Bonita,

    As Paul rightly pointed out, I had a spelling mistake in the plugin name. It should have been called arl_hicksdesign_archives(). What I initially released was missing the s in the middle.

    I’ve already fixed the spelling mistake and uploaded a new copy. If you download the plugin again and update you’re copy – it should ‘just work’.

    Thanks for the quick pick up Paul.

    Regards,
    Al.

  4. Ok. Done.
    The problem I think I’m having also though is “calling” it. The actual “code” to call it.
    This is all I’m putting on a page created under the name of “Archives”:

    What am I doing wrong? I don’t know how to actually get the archives to display on a page.

    For php idiots like me, adding those instructions, would be soooooo helpful! LOL

    I hope you can help with that too!
    Thanks!

  5. Bonita,

    I just had look at you’re archives page and you are calling it incorrectly. Once you’ve activated the plugin, simple add the following line to your archives.php file in the appropriate place:

    <?php arl_hicksdesign_archives(); ?>

    Just so you know what is going on, that line of code is opening a PHP block, making a single call to the plugin and then closing the PHP block.

    Regards,
    Al.

  6. CeeJay,

    You’re right, the output of the two plugins are very similar.

    I’ve just gone and downloaded the clean archives plugin to have a look at the plugin code. One thing that was very clear to me, was that the clean archives plugin uses a lot of queries to generate the archive list, mine uses one.

    Other than that, not a lot of difference but a bit of choice never hurt anyone!

    Al.

    [Edit]: To fix a glitch with the permalink’s, I’ve been forced to implement get_permalink() which I was deliberately avoiding. As such, the total number of queries to render the page has gone through the roof (approximately 130 queries are fired to generate the page, plus the archive list which contains about 110 posts).

  7. Al, thanks! I’ll give it a try!
    Yeah, I did notice it’s similar to the SRG Clean Archives, but I agree… a choice doesn’t hurt anyone!

    Thanks for your help!

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