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WPBeginner» Blog» Plugins» How to Archive Posts Without Deleting Them in WordPress

How to Archive Posts Without Deleting Them in WordPress

Last updated on March 26th, 2015 by Editorial Staff
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How to Archive Posts Without Deleting Them in WordPress

Have you ever wanted to hide older posts from your blog without deleting them? Wouldn’t it be nice if you can just archive a post similar to archive emails? In this article, we will show you how to archive posts without deleting them in WordPress.

Archive Posts in WordPress

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If you don’t like the video or need more instructions, then continue reading.

First thing you need to do is install and activate the Archived Post Status plugin. It works out of the box, and there are no settings for you to configure.

Upon activation, the plugin adds a custom post status called ‘Archived’ to your posts, pages, and custom post types. You can select it by editing a post or page and clicking the status from the drop down menu under Publish metabox.

Archived post status in WordPress post editor

Once you select the archive post statys, click on the update button to update your post.

Your post will be marked as archived, and it will stop appearing on the front-end of your site. You will still be able to search and find the post in the admin area.

Archived post in WordPress admin area

What if you wanted to quickly archive multiple posts at once? Simply head over to the posts screen and select the posts you want to archive.

Bulk editing posts in WordPress

Next, from the bulk actions drop down menu select Edit and click the apply button. WordPress will show you the bulk edit options for the selected posts. Under the status option, choose Archived and click the update button.

Bulk update posts

That’s all. Your selected posts will now be archived.

We hope this article helped archive older posts without deleting them in WordPress. You may also want to check out this article on how to add notification to your old posts.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Google+.

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About the Editorial Staff

Editorial Staff at WPBeginner is a team of WordPress experts led by Syed Balkhi. Trusted by over 1.3 million readers worldwide.

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32 Comments

Leave a Reply
  1. Maria Grace says:
    Dec 4, 2019 at 11:41 am

    The Archive Post plugin has not be updated in the last three WordPress updates. My security software says it is a security risk. Is there another alternative to achieve archived status that is not? All the plugins I’ve found for this are also out of date.

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Dec 5, 2019 at 10:34 am

      We will keep an eye out for alternatives but for if you should install plugins with that warning, you may want to take a look at our article here: https://www.wpbeginner.com/opinion/should-you-install-plugins-not-tested-with-your-wordpress-version/

      Reply
  2. Chantelle says:
    Feb 12, 2018 at 8:14 pm

    Just a question it states that I need to pay for the business part of WordPress in order to have plugins, is there anything I can do to have an Archive?

    Reply
  3. nick says:
    Nov 15, 2017 at 10:05 am

    What happens to these posts when they are archived? What does “Archiving” mean with this plugin? Does it mean 404, noindex, move to a category and keep it live, etc?
    I’m curious how to reduce the crawl bandwidth of a site but also keep from creating 404 errors by simply deleting posts

    Reply
  4. Tuesday Robbins says:
    Jul 14, 2017 at 11:18 pm

    I don’t have any archive plugins and I have one post when you try to go to it it says the title and then archived after. How can I fix this as I don’t want to archive anything I want my post to be visible but I didn’t archive anything to begin with. This is so weird

    Reply
  5. Steve says:
    May 21, 2017 at 4:16 pm

    I have the same trouble as Sarah:

    If I mark the post as ARCHIVED
    It STILL shows up on the main page
    It does NOT show up in the ARCHIVES page.
    If I mark the post as PUBLISHED
    It STILL shows up on the main page
    It DOES show up in the ARCHIVES page.

    * confused *

    Reply
  6. nayosha says:
    Mar 2, 2017 at 1:26 am

    Does it arises broken links problem to our blog. If we do the above process

    Reply
  7. Bill Scully says:
    Dec 6, 2016 at 12:58 pm

    I have the same question as Dan Rickman and Eagle4000 : How can i make the Archived posts visible to VISITORS using the Archive button on the Home page Menu? I have the Fruitful theme. Thanks!!

    Reply
  8. Sve says:
    Jun 16, 2016 at 4:05 pm

    When posts are archived, how can I call them for example on a page. I want to be able to remove some posts from the main content and archive the, but also to have a separate page where I can call only archived posts and nothing else. Any ideas how I can do this ?

    Reply
  9. Tania D. Russell says:
    May 25, 2016 at 5:39 pm

    Thanks for the info. This plug-in was exactly what I was looking for and its working perfectly for me.

    Reply
  10. Sarah says:
    Mar 30, 2016 at 7:47 pm

    hello, i did as you suggested, and the posts were marked with Archived: on the title but still shows up on the front page. I also did an archives page as was suggested in this blog so that the archived articles can still be accessed.

    What am I doing wrong? See this part:

    Reply
    • Lauren says:
      Sep 24, 2017 at 1:21 pm

      You have to log out to see how it will look to a visitor.

      Reply
  11. Dan Richman says:
    Mar 29, 2016 at 10:23 pm

    I need to be crystal clear on this. If I use this plug-in, will archived posts still be visible to visitors using the Search window? I’d be using the Newspaper theme. Many thanks for your help!

    Reply
  12. Winifred Creamer says:
    Feb 25, 2016 at 11:46 am

    The plugin is described as working out of the box. I downloaded the archive plugin and its in my downloads folder. How do I connect it with my blog? Do I need to put it in my WordPress folder that is in programs? What does out of the box mean exactly?
    Thanks.

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Feb 26, 2016 at 12:19 am

      It will work out of the box once you install it. It seems that you have downloaded the plugin but haven’t installed it. Please take a look at our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

      Reply
  13. Miles says:
    Dec 8, 2015 at 10:31 am

    Very interesting read however, not sure if solves my query. I need to archive a large number of posts but want to make them searchable to the website user but NOT to Google. I was hoping that the archiving meant the posts would be moved to a seperate directory e.g. /blog/archive/ whereas up to date content would be in /blog/

    Any ideas?

    Reply
    • Patrick says:
      Feb 1, 2016 at 8:32 am

      If you move them to a different directory, it would change the URL and cause any incoming links for those posts to become broken.

      Reply
  14. knopf says:
    Oct 18, 2015 at 5:45 pm

    Great article! Thanks for the help.

    Reply
  15. Hillary says:
    Sep 28, 2015 at 1:15 am

    I archived some of my posts and now I can’t find them. Where do I go to view/edit/un-archive posts that I have archived?

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Sep 28, 2015 at 5:41 am

      You will find a link to view archived posts on the Posts screen just above the filtering options.

      Reply
      • eagle4000 says:
        Feb 23, 2016 at 5:52 pm

        I still want my visitors to be able to go and search and view the posts that I have archived. But I don’t want my opening page to get increasingly bigger and bigger…. this is only taking care of Half of the issue

        Reply
  16. Kirsty says:
    Aug 19, 2015 at 5:51 am

    I have a new domain name (now pointed at my old blog) and am about to set up a whole new website/blog etc? Is it possible to archive my old blog (in its entirety) to another page or similar so I can have a fresh new start under my new domain name?

    Reply
  17. Hilary says:
    Aug 12, 2015 at 11:49 am

    Hi, this is useful, thanks. I have a further query – I set up a wordpress blog for my class 2014 – 15. I wold like to keep the same template and some of the same information, but change the name (it would be the same but with 15 at the end of it instead of 14 then archive a lot of links and some posts. What is the best way to do this?

    thanks

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Aug 13, 2015 at 3:58 pm

      You can do that using multiple ways. For example you can move all your old content into a category titled ‘2014-15’ and then start posting your new content in a new category titled ‘2015-16’.

      You can then modify your templates to not show content from 2014-15 category.

      Reply
  18. Janelle says:
    May 31, 2015 at 6:17 pm

    Thanks for this help.

    Reply
  19. WPBeginner Staff says:
    Mar 1, 2015 at 11:25 pm

    Yes.

    Reply
  20. WPBeginner Staff says:
    Mar 1, 2015 at 11:23 pm

    Yes, it will remove the posts from sitemap and links to the post will take the user to 404 page.

    Reply
  21. patty says:
    Feb 26, 2015 at 8:57 pm

    Does archiving them remove them from the site map? Would a link to the page then be broken?

    Reply
  22. WPBeginner Staff says:
    Feb 25, 2015 at 10:55 pm

    This plugin should work with WooCommerce as well. It can add Archived post status to any custom post types and products in WooCommerce are custom post types.

    Reply
  23. Dave says:
    Feb 25, 2015 at 8:58 pm

    Can you just set your posts as Private?

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Staff says:
      Feb 25, 2015 at 10:52 pm

      You can do that but that will not exclude the posts from the loop when a logged in user views the site.

      Reply
  24. GiniD says:
    Feb 25, 2015 at 12:10 pm

    Good to know. Do you know if there is a plugin that will do this to products for WooCommerce. If I want to take a product off the site now I have to change it to “drafts”. It would be nice to have an “archive” option for products.

    Reply

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