{"id":315,"date":"2013-09-18T23:23:21","date_gmt":"2013-09-18T15:23:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.techcoil.com\/blog\/?p=315"},"modified":"2018-09-04T13:06:00","modified_gmt":"2018-09-04T05:06:00","slug":"how-i-create-a-page-in-my-wordpress-blog-that-lists-all-my-posts-and-groups-them-by-month-and-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.techcoil.com\/blog\/how-i-create-a-page-in-my-wordpress-blog-that-lists-all-my-posts-and-groups-them-by-month-and-year\/","title":{"rendered":"How I create a page in my WordPress blog that lists all my posts and groups them by month and year"},"content":{"rendered":"

I realised that there was something missing in my WordPress blog; a page that lists all the posts that I had written so far<\/a>. This post documents what I had explored to give my blog a page that lists all my posts, starting from the most recent post down to the oldest post, and groups them by month and year.<\/p>\n

A high level plan<\/h2>\n

I first did some research on this topic. In order to include a page that list all the posts in my WordPress blog, I will need to do the following:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Create a template file in my theme folder, for instance, all-my-posts-so-far.php<\/strong><\/code><\/li>\n
  2. Create a page and name it as \"All Posts<\/strong>\" and set the template file as all-my-posts-so-far.php<\/strong><\/code>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The parts that form all-my-posts-so-far.php<\/h2>\n

    I broke down the codes in all-my-posts-so-far.php into the following parts:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Database access codes that retrieve all the published posts in my blog.<\/li>\n
    2. Iteration codes that display the post.<\/li>\n
    3. Conditional codes that group posts of the same month and year together.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      The database access codes that retrieve all the published posts in my blog<\/h3>\n
      \r\nglobal $wpdb;\r\n$allPostsArray = $wpdb->get_results(\r\n\t'SELECT ID, post_title, post_date, post_name FROM ' . \r\n         $wpdb->posts . \r\n        ' WHERE post_type=\\'post\\' AND post_status = \\'publish\\'' .\r\n        ' ORDER BY post_date desc'\r\n);\r\n<\/pre>\n
      I globalize the $wpdb<\/code> variable to gain code access to my WordPress database. I then call its get_results<\/code> function, passing it a SQL select statement to get all my posts. The SQL statement looks for posts with the post_type<\/code> column having a \"post\" value, the post_status<\/code> column having a \"publish\" value, ordered by the post_date<\/code> column in descending order. <\/p>\n
      The $wpdb->posts<\/code> variable is used to retrieve the actual name of the table in my WordPress database that stores all my posts.<\/p>\n
      Iteration codes that display the posts and conditional codes that group posts of the same month and year together<\/h3>\n
      \r\n$earlierPostMonthYear = 'January 2000';\t\r\n$latestMonthVisited = FALSE;\r\nforeach($allPostsArray as $post) {\r\n    \r\n    $postDate = date_create($post->post_date);\r\n    $currentPostMonthYear = date_format($postDate, 'F Y');\r\n\t\t\r\n    $postFromAnotherMonthYear = ($currentPostMonthYear != $earlierPostMonthYear);\r\n\t\r\n    if ($postFromAnotherMonthYear) {\r\n\r\n        if (!$latestMonthVisited) {\r\n\t    $latestMonthVisited = TRUE;\r\n\t}\r\n\telse {\r\n\t    echo '<\/ul>';\r\n\t}\r\n?>\r\n<h3><?php echo $currentPostMonthYear?><\/h3>\r\n<ul>\r\n<?php\r\n\t} \/\/ end if ($postFromAnotherMonthYear)\t\r\n?>\r\n<li>\r\n\t<a href="<?php echo get_bloginfo('url') . '\/' . $post->post_name;?>" \r\n           title="<?php echo $post->post_title;?>">\r\n\t<?php echo $post->post_title;?>\r\n\t<\/a>\r\n<\/li>\r\n<?php\r\n\t$earlierPostMonthYear = $currentPostMonthYear;\r\n    } \/\/ foreach\r\n?>\r\n<\/pre>\n
      I place the $allPostsArray<\/code> variable in a foreach<\/code> loop, setting each post record into the $post<\/code> variable. I then use the date_create<\/code> and date_format<\/code> functions to get a string representation of the month and year of the current post. <\/p>\n
      I then compare the month and year of the current post with the month and year of the previous post. When there is a difference, I do the following:<\/p>\n
        \n
      1. Check if posts from the latest month had been visited, if yes, print a HTML<\/a> unordered list end tag; if no, set $latestMonthVisited<\/code> to TRUE<\/code>.<\/li>\n
      2. Print out the HTML<\/a> unordered list start tag along side a HTML header level 3 element that enclosed the month and year of the current post.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
        Outside the check, I print a HTML list element that enclosed the HTML link to the current post.<\/p>\n
        Create a WordPress page, name it as \"All Posts\", and link it to all-my-posts-so-far.php<\/h2>\n
        Well the final step is straightforward. I hover to the \"Pages\" menu item at the left of my WordPress administrator site and click on the \"Add New\" link.<\/p>\n
        I typed in \"All posts\" in the first text field, and the locate the Template dropdown at the \"Page Attributes\" section at the right. But wait...<\/p>\n
        Where is the option value for my all-my-posts-so-far.php WordPress template at the \"Page Attributes\" section?<\/h4>\n
        It turned out that I had left something out at the start all-my-posts-so-far.php<\/code>. <\/p>\n
        To be able to select all-my-posts-so-far.php<\/code> as the template file to link to the \"All posts\" page, I had to place the following code at the start of the file:<\/p>\n
        \r\n\/*\r\nTemplate Name: All my posts so far\r\n*\/\r\n<\/pre>\n
        With that, I completed the inclusion of a page that lists all the posts in my WordPress blog and groups them by month and year.<\/p>\n\n