Seeking opinions – Archive Lists vs. Calendar vs. Neither?

  • Curious what you folks, both as browsers and blog owners, think about the various ways of accessing older posts: The monthly archive list or the calendar or none of the above (perhaps just the “Search” form).

    I’m in the midst of hacking up a theme to use on my site. By default, it does the monthly list. I realize that might get a bit long over time so am pondering going to the calendar.

    However, I think look over my logs and analytics and realize the large number of folks arriving at my site come as referrals to a specific post via one search engine or aggregator. In which case… do I need either calendar or archive list when perhaps my UTW tags and “Search” field may be just fine.

    Thus, I’m here to hear your opinions and thoughts.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

  • Personal opinion: someone may arrive via search engine/one post, but once there, if they’re interested they may like to read more – and if you don’t give some way of accessing archives they may just leave.

    I use “A Different Monthly Archive” plugin from https://www.oneofthosedays.org.uk/projects/plugin-archives –

    It gives you a little tabular-data block with a separate box for each month in a given year in which there are posts.

    Then I use the wp calendar too, so that once navigation to a given month/year has occurred, any days with posts are highlighted.

    I personally never use tags, tag clouds or the “resident” search box – none of them fit the way I do things….

    Thread Starter Chris_K

    (@handysolo)

    Ah, very interesting. At that plugin page you listed, is that it in action over there in the sidebar? If so, that’s about the most “perfectest” compromise I’ve seen yet between an ordered list of years/months and a regular wp calendar. I rather like it.

    The tags thing is interesting. If I believe my logs, apparently I have some folks (and every dang robot) clicking on ’em from time to time. I don’t see many ever clicking the category links though. Pondering that next. Moving categories and archives to a dedicated “Page” may be an interesting option I suppose.

    Yep, that would be it in use. You can see it here as well: https://vkaryl.net/pov/ – colorated, etc. to match….

    Thread Starter Chris_K

    (@handysolo)

    Vkaryl, added that plugin and… WOW. Slick. ?? Thanks for that tip.

    Now to hack some colors for it. I’m trying to “grok in fullness” all this complementary color stuff. Which is tough when I’m not sure I see them all to start with.

    Yup, it’s a good ‘un….

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
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