There has been some debate by bloggers over the past few years as to the value of displaying your archives, with some bloggers going as far as to not even display their categories! The general idea is that the use of recent posts, popular posts, and a built-in search feature will allow your readers to find what they are looking for.
Well, I for one still believe that categories and archives should be displayed on blogs. If you’d like to do the same for a WordPress blog, here is the code you’ll want to use. For your convenience, we’ve provided two options for each: traditional display and drop-down menus.
Simply paste the WordPress code below in your sidebar.php file where you want the category or archives to display:
Display Categories
<h2>Categories</h2>
<ul>
<?php wp_list_cats('sort_column=name'); ?>
</ul>
Display Categories in Drop-Down Box
<form action="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>/" method="get">
<?php
$select = wp_dropdown_categories('show_option_none=Select category&show_count=1&orderby=name&echo=0');
$select = preg_replace("#<select([^>]*)>#”, “<select$1 onchange=’return this.form.submit()’>”, $select); echo $select; ?>
<noscript><input type=”submit” value=”View” /></noscript>
</form>
Display Archives
<h2>Archives</h2>
<ul>
<?php wp_get_archives('type=monthly'); ?>
</ul>
Display Archives in a Drop-Down Box
<select name=\"archive-dropdown\" onChange='document.location.href=this.options[this.selectedIndex].value;’>
<option value=\”\”><?php echo attribute_escape(__(’Select Month’)); ?></option>
<?php wp_get_archives(’type=monthly&format=option&show_post_count=1?); ?> </select>
