Archives page

The archives page is an index of the whole blog: every published post, grouped by year and then by month, newest first. It is the counterpart to the blog listing — the listing is what you read, the archives are what you search by eye.

Set it up

Customize → Blog → Archives page. Pick a page and the index is built on it, under whatever the page itself says. Leave it unset and the site simply has no archives page.

Setup creates a page called Archives and points this setting at it.

There is no page template to choose. The archives index is not in the template dropdown and not reachable through the template hierarchy — the theme hands the index to whichever page this setting names, the same way notes and the portfolio choose their pages.

What else the page can show

Two checkboxes appear under the setting once a page is chosen. Both are off by default, which keeps the page as a plain index.

• Display all categories on the archives page — every category that has posts in it, listed above the index.
• Display popular tags on the archives page — the ten most used tags, each with the number of posts behind it.

Turn them on for a site with a real taxonomy behind it; leave them off for a blog with three categories, where the list says less than the index below it.

Writing on the page

Whatever you put in the page content is printed above the index. A sentence explaining what the reader is looking at goes a long way, and the page is an ordinary page, so anything the editor can do it can do.