How can I change the way dates shown in the archive widget?

Question

Now it shows something like this:

• March 2012
• February 2012

But I want to show something like this

• 03.2012
• 02.2012

or something in Turkish like this

• Mart 2012
• Şubat 2012

Answer 1

The WordPress Archive widget internally calls wp_get_archives(). You can find that function in wp-includes/general-template.php. On line 939 you find the applicable line:

/* translators: 1: month name, 2: 4-digit year */
$text = sprintf(__('%1$s %2$d'), $wp_locale->get_month($arcresult->month), $arcresult->year);

I see no filters that would allow you to change it to something like "03.2012" without changing the core files. However, if you just would like the month to show up in Turkish, it should only be a matter of defining WPLANG correctly in wp-config.php. Of course, you have to make sure you provide the language mo-file in your wp-content/languages/ directory.

Answer 2

For archives you can use the get_archives_link filter like this:

add_filter('get_archives_link', 'translate_archive_month');
function translate_archive_month($list) {

  $patterns = array( 
    '/January/', '/February/', '/March/', '/April/', '/May/', '/June/',
    '/July/', '/August/', '/September/', '/October/',  '/November/', '/December/'
  );

  $replacements = array( //PUT HERE WHATEVER YOU NEED
    '01.', '02.', '03.', '04.', '05.', '06.', 
    '07.', '08.', '09.', '10.', '11.', '12.'
  );    

  $list = preg_replace($patterns, $replacements, $list);
return $list; 
}

Hope it helps.