Roller Weblogger Archive Menu Macro

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Whenever I read my friend’s blogs who host on Blogger I always admire the archive menu that comes as standard; it’s pretty neat and really helps when you have a large number of blog posts over a number of years (something that bothers me because if a reader enjoys a blog post I want to make it as easy as possibly for them to find other, similar and related posts, but more on this later).

So I mocked up this simple, yet effective, version which produces a similar, self-generating, archive menu list.

Here’s an example:

And here’s the code (and don’t forget to change the $startYear and $startMonth variables to the year and month you started your blog as well as using your blog handle instead of ‘eclectic’):


## Blog Start Year
#set ($startYear  = 2007)

## Blog Start Month
#set ($startMonth = 4)

## Get the current Year and Month
#set ($countYear  = $now.getYear() + 1900)
#set ($countMonth = $now.getMonth() + 1)

## Text Adjust

#set ($zero = 0)

## Total number of years to cycle through
#set ($numberYear  = $countYear - $startYear)

<ul class="rEntriesList">

#foreach ($number in [0..$numberYear])

  #if ($countYear >= $startYear)

    ## Months in a year
    #foreach ($number in [1..12])

      #if  (($countMonth != 0) && ((($countYear > $startYear) || (($countYear == $startYear) && ($countMonth >= $startMonth)))))

        <li class="recentposts">

        #if ($countMonth     ==  1)
          #set ($nameMonth = "January")
        #elseif ($countMonth ==  2)
          #set ($nameMonth = "February")
        #elseif ($countMonth ==  3)
          #set ($nameMonth = "March")
        #elseif ($countMonth ==  4)
          #set ($nameMonth = "April")
        #elseif ($countMonth ==  5)
          #set ($nameMonth = "May")
        #elseif ($countMonth ==  6)
          #set ($nameMonth = "June")
        #elseif ($countMonth ==  7)
          #set ($nameMonth = "July")
        #elseif ($countMonth ==  8)
          #set ($nameMonth = "August")
        #elseif ($countMonth ==  9)
          #set ($nameMonth = "September")
        #elseif ($countMonth == 10)
          #set ($nameMonth = "October")
        #elseif ($countMonth == 11)
          #set ($nameMonth = "November")
        #elseif ($countMonth == 12)
          #set ($nameMonth = "December")
        #end

        #if ($countMonth > 9)
          <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20100123170540/http://blogs.sun.com/eclectic/?date=$countYear$countMonth">» $nameMonth, $countYear</a>
        #else
          <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20100123170540/http://blogs.sun.com/eclectic/?date=$countYear$zero$countMonth">» $nameMonth, $countYear</a>
        #end

        </li>

        #set ($countMonth = $countMonth - 1)

      #end
 
    #end

  #set ($countMonth = 12)

##</ul>

  #end

#set ($countYear = $countYear - 1)

#end

</ul>

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