Add Collapsing Date Archives to Your Blog

Hi Ashley,

I was wondering what plugin you use for your Archives?

I’m trying to find one for WordPress that can show posts in a dropdown list split up by year/month (similar to what’s available on Blogger). I find they really help push my pageviews as people are more likely to browse if they can see the post titles all in one place. But all the ones I’ve found so far are either wrong or really reaaaally UGLY!

Yours is the best one I’ve seen so far and I’d love to make something similar for my blog 🙂

Katy

Hi Katy!

This is a great question. 🙂 The widget you see in my sidebar is actually something I coded custom for my theme. So you won’t find that exact one in a plugin anywhere.

Collapsing Archives Plugin

However, there is a WordPress collapsing archives widget that is designed to look similar Blogger. It’s called Collapsing Archives.

Now, my experience with this widget is very mixed. Sometimes it works okay, and other times it’s really finicky and produces some PHP errors. In particular, I can say that it’s not compatible with the Bootstrap framework. This is because Collapsing Archives uses a CSS class called “collapsing”, which conflicts with Bootstrap.

But for most other non-Boostrapped designs, the plugin tends to work well enough. 🙂

Do you have a collapsing archive widget on your blog?

If so, what plugin do you use?

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17 comments

  1. i was actually going to ask you about that…but in the future because i already ask too much XD

    I don’t have any now but i’m still a newbie in wordpress and self-host and try to fix other things to make posts beauty and after move to the archive 🙂

    vera recently posted: 2015: Os meus desejos
  2. Well, I use a blogger hosted site, so I’ve never really had a problem with archives before. What I do have a problem with, is arranging my reviews automatically in alphabetic order in blogger. But that’s an issue for another day.

  3. I had it on my site, but it wasn’t working. When I clicked on it nothing happened so I just got rid of it. There are so many other ways to see posts so I figured I’d save the problem for another time. It is good to have I think. I find myself using it on other people’s blogs so I’ll have to look into it again sometime.

    1. Yeah I’ve had that exact same issue. I think it’s just a compatibility problem. It’s not coded very well to be universal because many of the class names it uses are too generic and might pop up in themes for different purposes.

  4. Hellooo. This was my question! 😀 hurrah! Thank you Ashley!!

    I actually discovered Collapsing Archives a couple of days after sending this but had the same problem as Carrie: it keeps disappearing.

    I’ve since discovered jQuery Archive List Widget which works PERFECTLY and looks v similar to Collapsing Archives 🙂 xx

    Katy recently posted: Happy Monday | 10 Good Things
    1. Yeah that’ll be the theme compatibility problem. 🙁 They use class names that are waaaaay too generic. :/

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