www.NewVentures.ca

As you may have ( or not ) noticed, I’ve been working on some of my problem pages recently ( which for the most part many have been temporarily fixed.) During my search for knowledge, I have come across some pretty amazing and interesting web sites and a few of them have had a quick and easy Index of archives available for quick research and perusal. It goes without saying now, that I wanted one of those too!

Annual and/or monthly indexes are nice if you are trying to catch up on your reading of a blog or subscription that you haven’t had the chance to check for a while,. But heck, most people use RSS feeds for that sort of stuff and when it comes to researching it is a real pain to have to open up individual pages hoping to find the gem you are looking for. Plus ( such as in my case ) most archives are set to monthly with only 10 on a page – which make matters worse! ( Not forgetting to mention that my on-site search engine isn’t working right either! )

So with my goal for a single listing ( all on one page ) of all my postings yet another search was underway. It was actually amazing how few resources addressed this issue. Most of the hits that I found pertained to tweaking the original Archive.php file within your original WordPress theme pack, but none on how to build a single page document for easy access!

Then I hit pay-dirt, and a great site for future reading and referencing, Herself’s Webtools. Not only did she have the type of archive that I was envious of, but she showed everyone how to make one for themselves!

She had taken an original plugin, Frucomerci’s ‘List Posts by Category Plugin and modified it for her own use. After she had what she liked, she then shared it with the world and included instructions on how others could do the same – said link to those instructions being available here.

She has also modified her own plugin at least three more times, to accommodate those who may have a special need, or have challenges with implementing or following her clear direction. This is a very busy lady, whom I cannot even refer to by name as it is not listed anywhere on her website, that being said, the website that I visited was one of many on various subjects, that she now maintains and writes on!

I had to do a little tweaking of her plugin myself ( to better fit my particular theme .) As she gave permission in advance to do so, so I did. Since it was written in PHP ( a type of scripting language ) it wasn’t terribly difficult to understand and follow, and by quickly changing a few pieces of the code it was up and running, and looking great ( in my not so humble opinion! )

Well to be truthful, it did point out a problem that I was developing, in that my categories were blurring together and the Index could be better “categorized”. If I am going to have an index of articles, I should at least make the index as usable as I can. Which means more categories PLUS now I have to go back and fix ALL the previous articles that I have posted, and put them into the “newer” categories that I develop.

And I can see already that I will have to “reorder” my sidebar and shift a few things around…

So it goes… until next time then!