Yearly Archives

By Arvind Satyanarayan on July 30, 2004 | Filed under Design & Templates | Comments (7)

One feature I find lacking in MT is yearly archives. A yearly archive basically is just a page of twelve calendars - one for each month of the year - see mine in action here with permalinks to the days.

Now there are two ways you can do this, one easier than the other. The first - harder - way to do it is installing Brad Choate's PerlScript Plugin and then follow the steps he has laid out here. I call this the harder method because for every year you are blogging you need to create a new index template and call the template module.

The second method, all you need to do is setup the archiving and MT will do a lot for you - including tidying up you monthly archive list ! You will need the ArchiveYear plugin and you will need to setup the Yearly Archive Templating as shown on that page, obviously customizing it to your MT install.

I have slightly customized the code listed on that page to suit my archiving (Individual). My code is as follows:

<table width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0">  <tr> <td valign="bottom"><MTArchiveYearPrevious> <span class="calendar"><a href="<$MTArchiveDate format="/archives/%Y/"$>"> « <$MTArchiveDate format="%Y"$> </a></span> </MTArchiveYearPrevious></td> <td align="center"><span class="year">Year of <$MTArchiveDate format="%Y"$></span></td> <td align="right" valign="bottom"><MTArchiveYearNext> <span class="calendarlink"><a href="<$MTArchiveDate format="/archives/%Y/"$>"> <$MTArchiveDate format="%Y"$> » </a></span> </MTArchiveYearNext></td> </tr></p> <p> <MTArchiveYear columns="3" skip="yes"> <MTArchiveYearRowHeader><tr></MTArchiveYearRowHeader> <td align="center" valign="top"> <MTArchiveYearIfNotBlank></p> <pre><code>  </code></pre> <p><div id="calendar"> <div align="center"> <table summary="Monthly calendar with links to each day's posts"> <caption><a href="<$MTArchiveDate format="/archives/%Y/%m"$>"><$MTArchiveDate format="%B %Y"$><a/></caption> <tr> <th abbr="Sunday"><span class="calendar">Sun</span></th> <th abbr="Monday"><span class="calendar">Mon</span></th> <th abbr="Tuesday"><span class="calendar">Tue</span></th> <th abbr="Wednesday"><span class="calendar">Wed</span></th> <th abbr="Thursday"><span class="calendar">Thu</span></th> <th abbr="Friday"><span class="calendar">Fri</span></th> <th abbr="Saturday"><span class="calendar">Sat</span></th> </tr></p> <p><MTCalendar month="this"> <MTCalendarWeekHeader><tr></MTCalendarWeekHeader></p> <p><td align="center"><span class="calendar"> <MTCalendarIfEntries><MTEntries lastn="1"><a href="<$MTEntryPermalink$>" title="<MTEntryTitle remove_html="1">" > <$MTCalendarDay$></a></MTEntries> </MTCalendarIfEntries><MTCalendarIfNoEntries> <$MTCalendarDay$></MTCalendarIfNoEntries><MTCalendarIfBlank> </MTCalendarIfBlank> </span></td><MTCalendarWeekFooter></tr></MTCalendarWeekFooter></MTCalendar> </table> </div> </div> </MTArchiveYearIfNotBlank> </td> <MTArchiveYearRowFooter></tr></MTArchiveYearRowFooter> </MTArchiveYear> </table>

Next to make MT automatically tidy up Monthly Archive Listings on January 1st, you will need to install MT-SetVarBlock and MT-Again. Once both are installed, replace your Monthly Archive Listing with

<ul> <MTSetVarBlock name="year"><$MTDate format="%Y"$></MTSetVarBlock> <MTArchiveYear order="descend"> <MTArchiveYearIfEntries> <li><a href="<$MTArchiveDate format="http://path/to/my/archives/%Y/%m/"$>" title="See all the entries for <$MTArchiveDate format="%B"$> <$MTGetVar name="year"$>"> <$MTArchiveDate format="%B"$> <$MTGetVar name="year"$><br /> </a></li> </MTArchiveYearIfEntries> </MTArchiveYear> <MTAgain> <MTArchiveYearPrevious> <li><a href="http://path/to/my/archives/<$MTArchiveDate format="%Y"$>/" title="See the Entries from my blogging year of <$MTArchiveDate format="%Y"$>"> Year Of <$MTArchiveDate format="%Y"$> (<MTArchiveYearCount>) </a></li> <$MTAgainHere$> </MTArchiveYearPrevious> </MTAgain></ul>

You will need to edit the code above as appropriate to the archive location for you blog. And voila, every new year MT will automatically generate a new yearly archive page and tidy up your monthly listings ! Much better than doing it manually I think !

7 Comments

leesa said:
on Oct 25, 2004 2:04 PM | Reply

Don't know if anyone's told you this but I get all this at the top of the page. Thought you'd like to know:

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Warning: main(): openbasedir restriction in effect. File(/home/arvinds/publichtml/cookiecheck.php) is not within the allowed path(s): (/home/movalog/:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php:/tmp) in /home/movalog/public_html/me/archives/2004/index.php on line 1

Warning: main(/home/arvinds/publichtml/cookiecheck.php): failed to open stream: Operation not permitted in /home/movalog/publichtml/me/archives/2004/index.php on line 1

Warning: main(): Failed opening '/home/arvinds/publichtml/cookiecheck.php' for inclusion (includepath='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home/movalog/public_html/me/archives/2004/index.php on line 1

elly said:
on Jun 20, 2005 4:28 AM | Reply

i'm really disappointed in this plugin, and even more disappointed with sixapart for not writing yearly archiving into the existing software.

as you can see, my layout is very customized on mt MT install, and the calendar based yearly archive layout won't work for what i need. i basically need the equivalent of a movable typing archive tag that would be <MTArchiveList archivetype="Yearly"> and could then have <MTArchiveList archivetype="Monthly"> nested inside it.

i'm bumming.

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