Custom archives page is a great way to bring together all your old content in one page. It allows you to have a dedicated page where you can list your monthly archives, category archives, tag archives, author archives, and anything else that you might want to add. We have a custom archives page for WPBeginner. Recently one of our users suggested that we write a tutorial on that. In this article, we will show you how to create a custom archives page in WordPress.
The Problem
By default, you have the ability to display your yearly archives by using sidebar widgets. This can get out of hands once you have been blogging for more than a year. Imagine sites like WPBeginner that have been active for nearly 4 years. We would have 48 monthly archive links in the sidebar. You also have the ability to add category archives, author listing, etc on your sidebar. But why clutter the sidebar with so many links when you can create a single page to list them all. This is when a custom archives page come in play. Not only does it allow you to avoid clutter, it also provides your users with an efficient way to browser through your older content.
Sadly, most WordPress themes do not come with a custom archives page template. Let’s look at what you need to create a custom archives page template in WordPress.
Note: Please do not confuse the custom archives with archive.php template that comes with most WordPress themes. The archive.php template is used to display monthly, category, tag, author, and other archive pages. Our custom archives page would be a single page that will bring all of your other archives together.
Creating a Custom Archives Page Template
First thing you need to do is to create a page template for the custom archives page. Simply open a new file in your text editor (i.e Notepad) and name it page-archive.php. Next, Add the following lines of code at the top:
<?php /* Template Name: Archives */ ?>
Upload the page-archive.php in your WordPress themes folder, and you have created an Archives page template. Now we need to make sure that this page template matches the design of your site. Copy the content of your page.php file located in your theme’s folder and paste it in page-archive.php.
Below is an example of how your page-archive.php file would look like:
<?php /* Template Name: Archives */ get_header(); ?> <div id="primary" class="site-content"> <div id="content" role="main"> <?php while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?> <h1 class="entry-title"><?php the_title(); ?></h1> <div class="entry-content"> <?php the_content(); ?> /* Custom Archives Functions Go Below this line */ /* Custom Archives Functions Go Above this line */ </div><!-- .entry-content --> <?php endwhile; // end of the loop. ?> </div><!-- #content --> </div><!-- #primary --> <?php get_sidebar(); ?> <?php get_footer(); ?>
Creating a Custom Archives Page in WordPress
Now that you have the basic page template ready, you need to create a new custom archives page in WordPress. Go to your WordPress admin panel and add a new page (Pages » New). You can call this page Archives, Library, or anything else that you like. Now look at the meta boxes below the publish button on the right hand side of your screen. You should see a meta box called Page Attributes. Click on the drop down menu below Template and choose Archive as your page template. Save and Publish the page.
Now you have created a page that uses the archives page template, however it will not show any content. Let’s go ahead and add custom archive page elements such as yearly archives, categories, etc.
Adding Monthly Archives with Compact Archives
If you look at our custom archives page, then you will notice that we are not using the default monthly archives listing that comes with WordPress. Instead, we are using a plugin called Compact Archives. Note we have adopted this plugin and are now maintaining it.
Install and activate this plugin the Compact Archives plugin. After activating the plugin, add the following code in your custom archives page template (page-archive.php):
<p><strong>By Date</strong></p> <ul> <?php compact_archive($style='block'); ?> </ul>
It will display your monthly archives like this:
Adding a List of all Categories
Categories summarize the main topics of your website and are the best way to sort your content. See why how we use Categories vs Tags. Since we are using categories as the main way to organize our content, we think it is absolutely crucial to list our category archives. To save space, we are going to display it an inline list.
First add this code in your archives page template file:
<p><strong>Categories:</strong></p>
<ul class="bycategories">
<?php wp_list_categories('title_li='); ?>
</ul>
<div class="clear"></div>
Now we need to style this list, make it appear inline and improve their look. Add this to your theme’s style.css file:
ul.bycategories {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}
ul.bycategories li {
list-style: none;
list-style-type: none;
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}
ul.bycategories li a {
list-style: none;
list-style-type: none;
margin: 0 20px 15px 0;
float: left;
background: #eee;
color: #464646;
padding: 5px 10px;
border-radius: 5px;
-moz-border-radius: 5px;
-webkit-border-radius: 5px;
}
ul.bycategories li a:hover{
text-decoration: none;
background: #ff6200;
color: #fff;
}
.clear{clear: both;}
Your categories will look like this:
Explore? Redirect Users to a Random Post
In our archives page, we have an Explore WPBeginner button. This button redirects users to a random post. The purpose is to allow users to randomly stumble through articles. Learn how to redirect users to a random post in WordPress.
While this is all the information that we have on our custom archives page, you can most certainly add more. Let’s look at some of the other things that you can add.
Adding a Tag Cloud
If you want to display a tag cloud of your most popular tags used on the site, then simply add the following code in custom-archive.php file:
<p><strong>Tags Cloud:</strong></p> <?php wp_tag_cloud(); ?>
The wp_tag_cloud() function comes with a lot of parameters to adjust the number of tags, maximum and minimum tag sizes, etc.
Adding a List of Pages
If you want to display a list of all pages on your site, then simply add the following code:
<?php wp_list_pages( 'title_li=' ); ?>
Adding a List of Authors
To display the list of authors on the site, simply add the following code:
<?php wp_list_authors( 'exclude_admin=0&optioncount=1' ); ?>
Adding Recent Posts
If you want to display a list of your most recent posts, then add this code:
<?php wp_get_archives('type=postbypost&limit=10'); ?>
A comprehensive archives page allows your users to efficiently navigate through your old content. We hope that this article helped you create a custom archives page in WordPress. If you have any questions or suggestions, then please let us know by leaving a comment below.
Martin says
Great article.
I have maybe a silly question. Is there any SEO benefit if I have a custom archive page or even archive.php. in the theme folder?
Or is it the same as creating a new page with url mydomain/archive and listing all my posts and pages based on the categories I want. This is what I would prefer.
Thank you
WPBeginner Support says
Having a custom archive would not give an SEO benefit, it would be personal preference and you can use your second method if you wanted.
Admin
Aileen says
Hi–my site is using the Genesis framework an it has a child theme. I tried to implement the page-archive.php, but I skipped the part where I copy the page design from page.php and I’d hope it would work regardless.
So when I tried implementing this, when I go to my Archive place, it gives an Internal error, ie. 505 and cannot find the page itself.
How does this work with Genesis?
WPBeginner Support says
Adding a custom page template would be the same as with any other theme, it seems like there may be a problem with the code you’re using to create the archive page.
Admin
Rahul Lakra says
Firstly, Thank you so much. But I can’t see any sidebar in this page. In normal pages it is visible. I will be so happy if you can help me out to display sidebar here too. Thanks In advance!
WPBeginner Support says
For the sidebar, sadly that is theme specific for what needs to be added, if you reach out to your theme’s support they should be able to let you know how they have the sidebars added to the templates.
Admin
Vijay Sundaram says
Hi,
This was a great tutorial. However, the CSS code for the categories does not seem to work. It is shown as a list with categories and subcategories. Where do I embed the code that you have given in the style.css file? What is meant by make it appear inline? It would be great if you could help me resolve this?
Regards,
Vijay Sundaram
John Paul says
Is it possible to filter the archive to just one category of a post?
Woolker Cherenfant says
Thank you for this helpful tutorial. I do follow along and have my custom archive page up. However, I still get the default WP archive under my custom settings. Could you please have a look and tell me what have I done wrong?
Thanks for your kind reply.
—Woolker Cherenfant
Woolker Cherenfant says
Never mind. I got it solved. Thanks.
—Woolker Cherenfant
WPBeginner Support says
Hi Woolker Cherenfant,
Unfortunately, its hard for us to detect any mistakes. We will recommend you to try the tutorial again and see if this helps.
Admin
Neil says
I wonder if anyone can help?
hopefully someone might be able to help with an unusual problem that I have noticed – and it appears to have been occurring since Nov 2017 or before…
For example…
this url has been generated/created and I don’t know how or why… it seems that with two categories if I take a ‘whole’ url and copy and paste that after the category part only url then it will resolve… (and has been indexed!)
ie
I think this has only happened with (archive) pages…
To make matters worse these urls have been indexed by Google. I don’t know if a plugin has caused this or something else…
Note the single ‘/’ in the second part of the url…
WPBeginner Support says
Hi Neil,
Please see WordPress troubleshooting tips to figure out what caused this issue.
Admin
Subhash says
Dear Sir,
How to customize the look of default archive page. I want to add 2 sidebars instead of 1 sidebar. I am talking about this page https://www.wpbeginner.com/2017/06/
Thanks
WPBeginner Support says
Hi Subhash,
For that you’ll need to edit your theme’s date.php or archive.php template files and call your sidebars in the template file.
Admin
Subhash says
Hi Support Team,
Thanks for guidance about this.
Have a good day!
Regards
Subhash
Nyx says
Wonderful tutorial! Thanks so much.
Quick, I hope, question: I used your instructions for adding “Adding a List of all Categories.” How can I get my list itself to show justified inside the space, instead of left aligned. Thanks for any help.
Dave Ward says
This worked great, but I want to display an actual snippet of the archived pages instead of just a list. Is there a way to do that?
Mohammad Kharoofa says
Thanks for this useful article, I have one problem Add code to my theme’s style.css file, Where should I paste it exactly ? because I’ve tried to paste anywhere but nothing change!
Emma says
Can this be done with a free WordPress account, or do you need the customising options of one of the paid plans?
Thanks if you can let me know
WPBeginner Support says
Hi Emma,
Please see our guide on the difference between self hosted WordPress.org vs free WordPress.com blog.
Admin
Andry says
Hi !
I’m preparing a news site with WP theme but I have a GREAT question about archives, maybe you’d be able to give me your opinion thanks to your experience.
The site must give a new version everyday (relating to the paper edition) and offer an archive page which allows to find the old editions as it was published the day ‘d’. Plugins in WP allow only to have articles by date, so we have a list of the old artilces for a specific date but not the whole edition (a complete copy of the site as it was published at a ‘d’ date). Do you know any plugin for WP to ‘make a copy’ of a site so it’d be possible to link every ‘copy-date’ with a date in the calendar table? or an archive plugin to have automaticly the old editions ? Is it possible to have a folder (in the WP repertory) which contains all the articles of an edition ? so I can link each folder to a date in my calendar table ?
– Do you have in your favorite lists a good WP theme for newspaper ?
Thanks in advance !
Aaliya Thahseen says
Upload the page-archive.php in your WordPress themes folder, and you have created an Archives page template.
I am having difficulty with this part. How do I upload the page-archive,php in the wordpress themes folder?
WPBeginner Support says
You can do that using an FTP Client. Your WordPress hosting provider will provide you login details.
Once connected to your site using FTP, you need to visit /wp-content/themes/ folder. There you need to open your theme folder and upload the file from your computer. See our guide on how to use FTP to upload files to WordPress.
Admin
Cely says
Hello, I’ve been done the steps of uploading the php on the theme folder. then I went back to my wordpress, the templave “archives” is still not there. could you please help me.
dwieyoko says
how to create search form and display search result on archive.php.. ?
Kyran Wallace says
Hi there
This worked great for me! Thank you.
One thing though, My list of archives will not show on mobile devices. I am currently running the WPTouch plugin for mobile users.
Could you advise how to resolve this please?
Thanks
Pete says
Hi, is there a way just to list certain categories i.e. exclude some categories from the list?
Thank you.
WPBeginner Support says
yes you can use wp_list_categories function like this.
<ul> <?php wp_list_categories('exclude=4,7&title_li='); ?> </ul>Replace 4,7 with the IDs of categories you want to remove.
Admin
loic says
Hello,
I have registered different CPT.
I have created a page template which list posts for a given CPT.
I have put a query (query_posts(‘posts_per_page=-1&post_type=my_cpt_one’); before the loop.
Than I have selected the page template when creating the page archive of the given CPT.
How to use the same page template for each CPT?
For example, I want three page archive named “my cpt one”, ‘my cpt two”, “my cpt three” which calls the same page template.
Of course, i could use three page templates, but I’m looking for a way to use only one page template.
My problem is to set in the query the post type slug.
Is that possible?
Cheers.
Avdhesh Arya says
Thanks so much! This has helped a lot in creating a custom Archives page for my website.
WPBeginner Staff says
That’s because template tag wp_list_categories generates a bulleted list of your categories by default. Child categories are displayed indented under their parent categories. You can use
<?php wp_list_categories('title_li=&style=none'); ?>to display your categories with line breaks.Cara Zimmerman Seekell says
My categories look sort of all over the place, any idea why?
yasinatagun says
Cant we make it without plugin? I just want to list my all of posts in one page. No matter there is 10000 posts or 2 post. i just want to list ?
Luca says
I would like to create an yearly/monthly archive of a specific category. Is it possible using with a filter for a specific category?
April says
I am looking high and low for my themes folder… I know a
little more than basic for coding, but working with WordPress has been
difficult for me trying to find everything. Maybe it is not compatible with
what I have.
I am trying to have a page on my blog for a list of Archived
blog posts that looks like this: https://www.wpbeginner.com/archives/ with year,
month, and categories. I have a lot of posts. I tried the plugin http://wordpress.org/plugins/archives/
for Archives and created a page and added [archives] and all I got was a whole
list of all my blog post titles. It was long.
I found this post https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-create-an-archives-page-in-wordpress/
but I cannot locate a themes folder in wordpress. Maybe I have the wrong set
up?
I am hosted with one of the outside WordPress recommended
hosts using WordPress for my blog. My theme is Twenty Ten.
If someone could help me get the result I am looking for,
that would help me a lot. Thanks!
Essekia Paul says
If anyone is looking for an answer to this. The path is :
WordPress root folder -> wp-content -> themes -> Twenty Ten
Member At Blc says
I have added the archive page to my site but I only want to see the date / categories and archives in the members only section Is this possible?
Member At Blc says
I have just added archive page to my site but want the posting pages, dates and categories hidden and only visible when you log in. My post pages currently show blocked but I see them in public view. Can these be hidden???
Avinash says
Works Perfectly, When I tried to add &show_count=1 then the count breaks the category listing .. can you help with the css needed for the count to display properly.
Pawan Kesari says
Very helpful. I have just added archive page to my blog site
Question: Would this template file get deleted during theme upgrade?
WPBeginner Support says
Yes it will, it would be better to create the template file in a child theme.
Admin
Charlie says
Nice howto, but is there any way to manage something like this in a plugin?
Nicole says
I love this tutorial! However, I want my tag cloud to be separated by commas. Here’s the code I used for the tag cloud (I don’t want the font sizes to change so I kept the smallest and largest at the same size)…
Tags
Any tips?
WPBeginner Support says
Your code was stripped by WordPress comments. This snippet should work:
<?php $args = array( 'smallest' => 8, 'largest' => 22, 'separator' => ',' ); wp_tag_cloud($args); ?>Admin
voltima says
Thanks a lot for a very easy to understand ‘how-to’.
Thomas says
Hi, thanks for the great tutorial!
I did set-up the list of all categories which looks perfect. The only problem I have is that if I add any content to that page, the list of all categories is always placed at the bottom. Is there a way how I can set it to the top of the page?
Archurst O. A says
Is there a way to show per day or week instead of the monthly archive style?
sameera says
Thanks. Grete work.
Nad' says
Hello guys,
First of all, thanks for this amazing website. I have used this post to create the archive but since yesterday the archive page is no longer working. I have not changed the code and now the only thing I see is By date. after that, I cannot see anything, not even the sidebar or the footer.
My template is running locally as I am building it. Any idea what could have caused that?
thanks
WPBeginner Support says
seems like a coding error in your template is breaking the template right after it displays your archives by date.
Admin
meki says
I copied your given code but my site is not showing any kind of archives. Your code has an error. 0n line # 16 you are closing ?>php then starting html, which will simply print html on page. I activated plugin, corrected the code but still my page is empty. Let me correct, thanks.
Meki says
I do not have a page.php as well.
Meki says
any reply?
WPBeginner Support says
Meki, we are sorry but we are unable to understand the issue you are facing. As for page.php file you may be using a Theme Framework so your theme may not show a page.php file. Please contact your theme author and ask them which file you should use as the base for your custom page templates.
Craig Parker says
Awesome. I’ve got to bookmark it and come back, but an archves page is something I’ve been wondering about for a bit now.
Kelly says
Great tutorial. Could you clarify something before I begin. I’m using a child theme. Should I add the page-archive.php file within the folder of the actual “theme files” or should I place it within the child-theme-folder? Likewise….Now we need to style this list, make it appear inline and improve their look. Add this to your theme’s style.css file. I’m going to assume I can add this within my child-theme as custom css; is that the correct approach?
WPBeginner Support says
Yes this is the correct approach.
Admin
gary bvings says
I’d like to combine the two archive display ideas above. I have two categories: Cars and Boats. I’d like to show the monthly archives ( with the Compact Archive plug-in) for each. What php do I use? Thanks.
Maschil says
Great tutorial — thanks
It has worked perfect!
I copy and pasted the css provided into my css file and it did not change the look at all. Thoughts?
WPBeginner Support says
It depends on where you copy pasted your CSS.
Admin
Kate Reid says
Thanks so much for this really useful post. I’ve just started using a really minimal theme, so this custom archive page is perfect to help navigation. It’s looking good!
nicole holgate says
Hi,
Great plugin and easy to use.
I am trying to use it for a custom posts archive page (only the custom posts to be listed in years, by month.
Does this work with custom post types at all? Currently it is only listing regular post types.
With thanks
Nicole
Emily says
Ok I think I’ve figured out where to upload it, but now it’s not supporting my notepad file.
WPBeginner Support says
Make sure that your file name is page-archive.php and not page-archive.php.txt or page-archive.txt
Admin
Emily says
I do not understand where to upload my page-archive.php file. Where is the WordPress Theme folder?
Sheeba Yousuf says
I have created Archives.php and when on the page i click on the archives i don’t get which template is the posts using (custom posts) ,its a mess actually. Could you please help.
Chris Raymond says
i see you are using the_content in the loop, but when you click on a month and see the posts, it is only showing a snippet. Is that controlled via another custom function? Could I instead use the_excerpt?
TIA, very useful post
WPBeginner Support says
the_excerpt will show a short snippet of the posts. the_content is used to display full posts. See this guide Full Post vs Summary (Excerpt) in WordPress Archive pages.
Admin
real name says
good work man …kepp it up
Atanas says
Well… This post is quite useful but I got problem… I have Thesis 1.8 theme and I am not able to find page.php file in my theme folder …. Sad… Any ideas…
WPBeginner Support says
Thesis is a theme framework you need to check Thesis Documentation to learn how to make these changes.
Admin
Saranya says
Great tutorial. It helped me a lot as a beginner. Thank you so much.
Syed Irfan says
Syed, you are doing a great job for the beginners, and I think its a great service specially for the very non skilled just like me. Masha Allah and JazakAllah!