WordPress Archive Calendar Widget

One of the most addicting aspects of Open Source software is the ability to scratch one's own itches.

I've been blogging since 2004 - and while I'd never mistake longevity for expertise - I do take a certain pride in letting my readers know that I've spent over a decade bashing out words.

So, I decided to build a simple widget which would display my posting history in a calendar style. And now, it's time to release it to the world!

It's available on GitHub and the official WordPress plugin site.

What It Looks Like

It's a simple WordPress sidebar widget - displaying the archive as a table.

How It Works

Getting all the months which have published posts within them is pretty simple:

$query = "SELECT YEAR(post_date)  AS `year`,
	 MONTH(post_date) AS `month`,
	 count(ID)	AS `posts`
FROM $wpdb->posts
WHERE post_type = 'post' AND post_status = 'publish'
GROUP BY YEAR(post_date), MONTH(post_date)
ORDER BY post_date ASC
LIMIT 256";

It returns each month with an associated year and number of posts - e.g.

array(
    array('year' => '2004','month' =>  '5','posts' => '5'),
    array('year' => '2004','month' =>  '6','posts' => '3'),
    array('year' => '2004','month' =>  '7','posts' => '1'),
    array('year' => '2006','month' =>  '4','posts' => '1'),
    array('year' => '2006','month' => '11','posts' => '1'),
    array('year' => '2007','month' => '11','posts' => '4'),
    array('year' => '2007','month' => '12','posts' => '5'),
    array('year' => '2008','month' =>  '1','posts' => '2'),
    ...

It's then just a case of iterating through the array and constructing the tables.

Future Developments

• Colour Picker - I'm no æsthete, so people may prefer to choose their own colour scheme.
• Sorting - allowing reverse date order.
• Font sizes - on a smaller sidebar, the longer month names wrap.
• Tests - because why not :-)
• Better CSS - not my strong suit!
• i18n - some people have the temerity to speak languages other than English. Savages!

The source code is available on GitHub and the official WordPress plugin site.