An archive is an automatically generated list of posts, available at various locations in your site. WordPress usually comes with some archives built in and ready to use, it’s also possible to create more.

They are usually accessible via a specific URL, related to the archive type.

There are two main types of archive that our plugin supports:

• Post Type archives
• Taxonomy archives

Post Type Archives

WordPress comes with a few post types built in, some examples are:

• Posts
• Pages
• Media
• Custom Post Types

However not all of them have archives. By default, only Posts has an archive ready to use, more commonly reffered to as the blog. Visitors can access a list of all your posts that will stay up to date as your create more posts.

Blog

The blog is the post type archive for regular posts and can be located in different places on your site depending on your site settings.

In a default WordPress installation, this will be your homepage, eg:

yoursite.com

However, the location can be changed by changing a WordPress setting via the dashboard.

Custom Post Types

Custom post types are useful for adding different kinds of data to your site. Much like the Posts post type, you can enable archives for your custom post types so that they appear on the frontend of your site.

An example might be a Book post type, which could be accessible at a URL:

yoursite.com/books/

Many plugins utilise custom post types. To enable archives for a custom post type, ensure that the public property is set to true.

Taxonomy Archives

The most commonly known taxonomies are Tags and Categories, but they inlcude more than just those – plugins and themes will often create taxonomies that behave like tags and categories, and it also possible to create your own.

Tags & Categories

Like the Blog archive, Tag and Category archives come built in to your WordPress site. Once you have some posts that are assigned to tags and categories, you can find them at their repective URLs:

• yoursite.com/tags/…
• yoursite.com/categories/…

Custom Taxonomies

Custom taxonomies can be created in your site to as a way assigning additional information to you posts, pages and custom post types.

By enabling the has archive option in your custom taxonomy, you’ll be able to display their archives on the frontend just like tags and categories.

You might be able to access a Genre taxonomy via a URL such as:

• yoursite.com/genre/…