Content Management

Archive Date Header Plugin

Freshness Warning
This blog post is over 22 years old. It's possible that the information you read below isn't current and the links no longer work.

4 Aug 2002

In the Movable Type support forums I’ve seen requests for the ability to group archives by date. Most of the time, people want to have an archive index that looks something like:

2002 August July June May April March February January
2001
December November October September August July June May April March February January

There have been a few people that have posted solutions using PHP or JavaScript, but I thought it would be nice to do this straight out of Movable Type.

Thus the Archive Date Header plugin was born.

Tim Appnel has taken over the maintenance and support of this plugin as of Oct 2004.

Download

You can get this plugin by downloading ArchiveDateHeader.zip

Installation

Unzip ArchiveDateHeader.zip and connect to your FTP server and open the directory where you have Movable Type installed.

Create a directory there called plugins if there isn’t one already and copy ArchiveDateHeader.pl to the plugins directory.

Using the plugin

Once you’ve installed the plugin you will have a new container tag, MTArchiveDateHeader. The tag only works within an MTArchiveList container tag, and if you try and use it elsewhere, you’ll receive an error.

If you use monthly archives, the contents of this container will only be printed when a new year starts.

If you use weekly archives, the contents of this container will only be printed when a new month starts.

If you use another sort of archive, the contents of this tag won’t be printed at all.

Here’s an example:

<MTArchiveList archive_type="Monthly">
<MTArchiveDateHeader>
<p><b><MTArchiveDate format="%Y"></b></p>
</MTArchiveDateHeader>
<a href="<$MTArchiveLink$>"><MTArchiveDate format="%B"></a> 
</MTArchiveList>

License

Like our other freeware, this plugin is released under the open-source MIT License. In plain English, that means you can do whatever you want with the software, including modifying it, selling it, or eating it, but we’re not responsible for anything that goes wrong.

Revision History

1.0 - August 4, 2002 Initial release.

Recently Written

Think Systems, not Symptoms

Dec 15: Piecemeal process creation frustrates teams and slows work. Stop patching problems and start solving systems. Adopting a systems thinking approach helps you design processes that are efficient, aligned with goals, and truly add value.

Your Policies Aren’t Your Culture

Dec 13: Policies guide behavior, but culture is the lived norms and values of your team. Policies reflect culture -- they don’t define it. Netflix’s parental leave shift didn’t change its culture of freedom and responsibility. It clarified how to live it.

Lighten Your Process Burden

Dec 7: Everyone hates oppressive processes, but somehow we keep managing to create them.

Product Add-Ons Are An Expansion Myth

Dec 1: Add-ons can enhance your product’s appeal but won’t drive significant market growth. To expand your customer base, focus on developing standalone products.

Protecting your Product Soul when the Same Product meets New People.

Nov 23: Expand into new markets while preserving your product’s core value. Discover how to adapt and grow without losing your product’s soul.

Building the Next Big Thing: A Framework for Your Second Product

Nov 19: You need a first product sooner than you think. Here's a framework for helping you identify a winner.

A Framework for Scaling product teams

Oct 9: The people, processes, and systems that make up a product organization change radically as you go through the stages of a company. This framework will guide that scaling.

My Networked Webcam Setup

Sep 25: A writeup of my network-powered conference call camera setup.