Simplest Way to Build Custom Archives Page?

Question

I am looking to create a page in Wordpress to output links to all of our posts from every month since we launched the blog. I have seen the archive.php template file in Wordpress, but this seems to overwrite a lot of other pages too (search results, author results, etc.)

So my plan is to create a single page similar to this archives page example. I was going to write a separate function solely for this page in my functions.php file, then use a shortcode to call out the info. Is this the best approach, or could I be going about this another way? Would appreciate any help on the topic :)

Answer 1

I would suggest taking a look at the Template Hierarchy structure to fully understand WHY archive.php overwrites certain pages (although it shouldn't overwrite search results)

If you wanted to go a custom template direction (might be the best way) I would do something like this

create a monthly-arcive.php file and paste the following (you can name it whatever)

/**
 * Template Name: Monthly Archive
 */
  //get the header
 get_header();

//normal WordPress loop 
if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); 
    the_content();
endwhile; 
endif; ?>

//show the archive list
<?php wp_get_archives('type=monthly'); ?>

//get footer
<?php get_footer(); ?>

Then create a new page and select "Monthly Archive as its template and you should be all set.

Things to note: You will need to style the custom template to match your other pages you may even want to start out by making a copy of another page. You should also look at wp_get_archive() in the Codex for more examples.

Hopefully that helps.