Last week was filled with the usual WordPress performance and security monitoring, along with a few specific updates for clients. I’m still watching out for the latest WordPress hack and seeing some of the ramifications: mostly multiple brute force login attempts.
But I found a great new plugin to pass along for those who have a large archive of blog posts.
A Better Way to Find Archives: by Title
For some business owners, the idea of blogging regularly is paralyzing. For others, it’s a necessary evil. They know it’s important to maintain online contact with customers or potential clients, but sometimes it’s a real grind. And the results are often slow in coming.
But there are some who embrace the idea and post daily.
Yes, daily. I’m not one of them, but I do have a client who does. I have watched his monthly traffic grow over the past few years. We have had to beef up security for his website because hackers and spammers love sites with traffic. But it’s been worth the effort.
Last week this client asked me if we could list all his blog posts by title. It sounds easy, but I wanted the best but fastest way to implement a solution.
Archives by date is easy…
By default, the WordPress blog archives are organized by date. You can sort posts by year and month, making it easy for visitors to browse past blog posts. And if they’re looking for something specific and don’t know when it was published, the standard WordPress search feature can find specific posts quite quickly.
But we wanted to have a page that could display blog posts by title so that visitors have the option of scanning past topics to see what might interest them. This format also helps new visitors get familiar with what my client writes about. If they’re interested, they can subscribe or follow the blog.
Although his is not a commercial website, I hope you can see the value to a small business of displaying WordPress archives by title. Potential customers can quickly get to know you and your business.
As is often the case, it turns out we are not the only ones looking for the option to list WordPress archives by title. There are numerous options and ideas out there.
Fortunately, I discovered a plugin by a respected WordPress developer. I have seen (and implemented) some of his other plugins and read some of his posts and comments in forums. So I was quite comfortable trying out this plugin. Of course, he developed the plugin because he wanted the exact same feature for his own website!
You can get Justin Tadlock’s “Clean My Archives” plugin here.
If you have many daily posts over multiple years (as my client does) Justin recommends using a caching system or separating years with a pagination system. I tried it without doing so and it hung up my page. I decided to create new pages for each year and add them to the navigation. That seems to be working well, but we’ll see how visitors respond.
About Steady Digital
We provide a WordPress maintenance plan to ease concerns like:
- Is my website performing at peak performance so visitors get the best experience possible?
- Do I have regular backups of my website in case something happens to my web server?
- What if my website gets hacked?
- How can I get up-to-date, professional training so I can use my website better?
- Who can I trust to do the updates that are beyond my technical or creative abilities?
Tired of trying to maintain your own website? A WordPress maintenance plan might be the solution for you.
