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Expanding Archives

By Ashley

Site Structure & Navigation / Menu Management & Mega Menus

Reviewed by Omar Dabbas

Trusted WordPress expert with 20+ years of experience evaluating plugins for the WP ecosystem.

Expanding Archives Review - In-Depth Analysis

Expanding Archives adds a widget to display old posts in an expandable format by year and month.

Performance Overview

WPS Score

6.79/10

User Rating

4.7/5 (based on 6+ reviews)

Active Installations

3,000+

Update Frequency

Below Average It is calculated using the weighted average of same category plugins.

Security Score

1 / 10 (Very Low Risk) It is calculated using the weighted average of all versions.

What It Does

Expanding Archives adds a widget that shows your old posts in an expandable/collapsible format. Each post is categorized under its year and month, so you can expand all the posts in a given month and year.

This plugin comes with very minimal CSS styling so you can easily customize it to match your design.

JavaScript is required. No IE support.

Comparing to Alternatives

Expanding Archives is a well-regarded plugin in its category with a few notable alternatives available that offer similar archive expansion features.

Top alternatives

Strengths

Lightweight and easy to customize with CSS
Simple yet flexible functionality
Clean execution with helpful element classes for styling
No known security vulnerabilities
Highly rated by users with no low-star reviews

Weaknesses

Lacks option to set default expanded or collapsed state for months
No bullet styling for posts which some users desire
No demo available to preview functionality before installation
Limited to free version with no premium features

User Sentiment Analysis

User reviews are overwhelmingly positive with a 4.7 average rating and no negative feedback reported. Users appreciate its simplicity and customization options.

Positive highlights

"Easy to use and customize." — mairag
"Very useful, lightweight plugin, will go in every theme and is easily customizeable with a bit of CSS" — Roger
"Cleanly executed" — hughc
"Looks nice if you only have a few posts per month" — asullivn

Common complaints

Weaknesses

No option to choose default expanded or collapsed month view
Lacks bullet points before posts for cleaner appearance
No demo available to preview plugin before use

Who Should Use This?

Best for

Users looking for a lightweight, easy-to-customize archive expansion plugin without the need for advanced features or premium upgrades.

Not ideal for

Those who want more control over default expanded/collapsed states or enhanced styling options like bullet points, or who prefer a plugin with a demo to try before installing.

Pricing & Value

Free version includes

The free version includes all core features for expanding archives with simple customization via CSS.

Final Verdict

Expanding Archives is a solid, well-rated plugin that offers simple and effective archive expansion functionality without any known security issues. Its lightweight design and ease of customization make it a great choice for users who want straightforward archive management.

However, it lacks some user-requested features like default collapsed/expanded states and bullet styling, and it does not offer a premium version or demo. Users needing these advanced options might consider alternative plugins.

Other Notable Features

Here are a few other notable features of this free Expanding Archives plugin.

Screenshots

FAQ

The plugin does not come with a settings panel so you have to do this with your own custom CSS. Here are a few examples:

Change the year background colour:

.expanding-archives-title {     background: #000000; }

Change the year font colour:

.expanding-archives-title a {     color: #ffffff; }

By default, the widget includes posts in all categories. You can add the following code to a custom plugin or a child theme’s functions.php file to limit the results to posts in a specific category:

add_filter('expanding_archives_get_posts', function(array $args) {      $args['cat'] = 2; // Replace with ID of your category.       return $args;  });   add_filter('expanding_archives_query', function(string $query) {      $category = get_category(2); // Replace with ID of your category.      if (! $category instanceof \WP_Term) {          return $query;      }       global $wpdb;       return "  SELECT DISTINCT MONTH(post_date) AS month, YEAR(post_date) AS year, COUNT(id) as post_count  FROM {$wpdb->posts}           INNER JOIN {$wpdb->term_relationships} ON ({$wpdb->posts}.ID = {$wpdb->term_relationships}.object_id AND {$wpdb->term_relationships}.term_taxonomy_id = 2)  WHERE post_status = 'publish'    AND post_date <= now()    AND post_type = 'post'  GROUP BY month, year  ORDER BY post_date DESC      ";  });

Be sure to set the ID of your category in both of the designated places (the examples use ID 2).

Note that the results may not update instantly, as the query to retrieve the date periods is cached for one day. To force the query to re-run, delete this transient: expanding_archives_months

By default, the widget will show a list of every year you’ve published posts.

If you have a lot of posts, you may wish to only show results from the last few years. This can be done with the following code snippet:

add_filter('expanding-archives/earliest-date', fn() => '-4 years');

You can change -4 years to any value supported by the PHP DateTime constructor. This can be a relative value (as shown above), or a specific date like:

add_filter('expanding-archives/earliest-date', fn() => '2023-01-01');

Note that the results may not update instantly, as the query to retrieve the date periods is cached for one day. To force the query to re-run, delete this transient: expanding_archives_months