by Ashley 4.7 (6 reviews)

Expanding Archives

Name: Expanding Archives
Rating: 4.7 (6 reviews)
Author: Ashley

This plugin adds a new widget where you can view your old posts by expanding certain years and months.

Expanding Archives ranks #4,170 among WordPress.org plugins with 3,000+ active installations, is #601 of 8,543 in the Customization category, a 4.7/5 rating from 6 reviews, and was last updated Aug 30, 2026. Data from WordPress.org, refreshed twice daily — see methodology.

Compatible with WP 7.1

vtrunk Current Version vtrunk

Updated 2 weeks ago Last Update on 30 Aug, 2026

Refreshed 15 hours ago Last Refreshed on

#601 of 8,543 in Customization Top 5% by installs Downloads -38.5% this week Actively maintained

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Rank

#4,170

-17 this week

Active Installs

3K+

-20.8%

KW Avg Position

0.3 worse

Downloads

22.9K

+12 today

Support Resolved

— No change

Rating

94%

Review 4.7 out of 5

4.7 (6 reviews)

Next Milestone 4K

Total Progress 78.9%

3K+ 4K+

519

Ranks to Climb

Growth Needed

8,000,000

Active Installs

Pro

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Rank Changes

Current #4,170

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Active Installs Growth

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Active Installs 0,000,000+

Growth +0.0%

Peak 0,000,000

Downloads Growth

Downloads

Growth

Peak

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Reviews & Ratings

4.7

6 reviews

Overall 94%

4 (67%)

2 (33%)

0 (0%)

Security History

Source: WPVulnerability

No known vulnerabilities on record for Expanding Archives. Checked 1 month ago.

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Plugin Details

Version: trunk
Last Updated: Aug 30, 2026
Requires WP: 3.0+
Tested Up To: 7.1
PHP Version: 7.4 or higher
Author: Ashley

Support & Rating

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 4.7
Reviews: 6
Support Threads: 0
Resolved: 0%

Keywords

archives navigation posts sidebar widget

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TL;DR

AI summary of the plugin's readme

This plugin is for WordPress site owners who want to display their post archives in a more interactive way. It solves the problem of long, flat archive lists by letting visitors expand and collapse posts grouped by year and month.

Expandable/collapsible post archive widget
Groups posts by year and month
Minimal CSS styling included
Customizable to match site design
Requires JavaScript

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about Expanding Archives

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)

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