As most users would agree, the plugin was in major need of some love and attention from the original 2.1 release which was released back in January 2007.
That’s the major reason why since April 30, 2007 when I took over the development of the plugin there’s been a ton of releases from me. Things needed to be brought up to the current needs and standards for the majority of WordPress users.
Basically after version 3.0 which I released on May 15, 2007 I’ve mostly been adding in features from user requests and optimizing the source code.
Ok, now the meat and potatoes of the SRG Clean Archives version 4.0.3 release…
Per a user feature request and sort of a bug that was caught by Owen Kelly, I’ve added an option to the plugin admin menu so you can toggle on/off showing a link to your detailed monthly post archive.
If you were wondering, detailed monthly archives are just the standard WordPress paged archives and the link will appear below the month link if toggled on.
Special thanks goes out to Owen for helping me get this bug/feature option working properly and doing some late night (or morning depending on your timezone) testing.
Seriously, I think this is going to be the final release for a little while… at least for more then 24-48 hours like I’ve been doing.
Thank you for your continued support and use of SRG Clean Archives.
PayPal donations are never expected but always appreciated: 
Thanks to Weblog Tools Collection for helping spread the word about SRG Clean Archives.
Updated: There was a small code validation error pointed out by a user which is now fixed as of version 4.0.4. Not a major release but wanted to let everyone know.
If you want to find out all the latest news on tech why not subscribe to our RSS feed?
Damn right! You deserve a break for a bit. You buster your butt on this since day one of taking over. Nicely done Sean!
Very good plugin. I like the new features – like the expand one.
Thanks!
Thanks for the continuous effort to improve this already great plug-in. You have done a excellent job after taking over the development of this plug-in from Shawn!
One thing I do not like about the new version is the link to your site at the end of archives listing. I know you have every right to do this, since it is your plug-in, but I hope you can excuse me for removing it because I simply feel it does not look pretty on my site. Furthermore, that line of code also breaks the XHTML validation, because align is not a valid attribute.
Once again, I am grateful for this wondergul plug-in! Thank you!
FYI… installed on two more sites tonight with no issues… so just the one site… should help me narrow down whats conflicting…
Enjoy the break!
@AsceticMonk: You’re welcome for improving the plugin. I actually rewrote the entire thing, so it’s much more user friendly as well as server resource friendly.
As for the plugin credit link, I just updated my release to remove my actual website name and put the Pi symbol with the same link.
The code does validate 100% and is XHTML valid which you can verify on my own site and archives page.
My entire site, including archives page is valid XHTML 1.0 Strict.
I looked at your source code and your page does not validate. You have an LI issue with your top navigation which is a very easy issue to fix.
As for removing the plugin credit line, that is your choice.
However why not consider making a PayPal donation or maybe do a post reviewing the plugin with a link back to my site to show your support for the many hours put into this project and freely available WordPress Plugin.
Thanks again for your support.
@Mr Papa: I’ve done extensive testing of the plugin as you know from our conversation, so it’s good to know it’s working on all but one of your sites.
I still think there is another plugin on your one site that’s causing issues. If you track it down, let me know so I can look into it.
I do know my plugin is coded very clean and WordPress friendly, so it has to be something coded wonky in another plugin.
Something else to check is make sure all your plugins are up-to-date as developers do release bug fixes, etc… at least they should.
Keep me posted and thank you for your continued support.
Hey Shawn, I see you up there in comment slot #1.
Indeed, it’s been almost a non stop roller coaster since I took over development just barely 30 days ago.
As you’ve seen, the plugin is completely rewritten and a nice amount of features and enhancements have gone into it.
I’m looking forward to at least 2 or 3 days without opening the source file and working on it.
It’s time to let the dust settle a little bit and see how people enjoy the plugin.
Hi Sean, I will definitely write a review on my blog recommending your plug-in to my readers.
Now, about the validation, I don’t know which validator you use, but my current Archives page is valid XHTML 1.0 Strict. There is no problem in my top navigation. On the other hand, I just did a validation on your Archives page, and this is what I got. Like I wrote in the previous comment, the error is caused by the “align”attribute. I hope this clarifies any confusion.
Lastly, I hope you enjoy couple days without working on this plug-in!
This hasn’t worked for me since 4.02.
I get the error: ERROR: No items were found to be displayed.
No mention of this in the FAQ. Suggestions?
Great update. It only gets better and better.
I gave you a recommendation in my commentary on blogging.
Thanks, Sean.
Peace,
Gene
@AsceticMonk: Apparently the W3C Firefox validator plugin I’m using was having a bad day and gave me a false reading.
I checked against the actual W3C validation link and saw the error.
It’s now corrected in version 4.0.4 with a float right which does validate. I also used the small tag to make it small
Thanks for catching this and your continued use and support of the plugin.
@Gene: Thanks for your kind words and recommendation in your blog post.
Hey Sean,
Excellent plugin, I was looking for something to do exactly what “Clean Archives” does. I’ve already added it, and it works perfectly.
Now that I have it set up to browse by date in an “Archives” page, is there a way to have the exact same setup, except arranged by category on a separate “Categories” page.
For example, where it says “May 2007″, it would have the category name, and where it says “April 2007″, it would have the second category name. Then, clicking on the cateogry name, would expand into a list of the post titles listed in that category, just as it does now in the “date categories”.
Hi Brandon. Thank you for your kind words and support.
A few people have asked the same question about adding categories and I do have it on my “to-do” list but I’m taking a few days off from this plugin to let my brain relax.
Keep checking back with my site and once I have something going for this, I’ll be sure to post about it.
What is your blogs URL?
That sounds great, I’ll definitely be checking back regularly.
As you can see here, I got your plugin working perfectly AND even left your credits! (just messing with you AsceticMonk lol)
http://www.fitbuff.com/blog/archives/
And right now, I have a temporary plugin set up to browse by category at:
http://www.fitbuff.com/blog/categories/
But, as you can see, the Categories page doesn’t look nearly as “Clean” as a similar plugin to yours would. Right now, they would have to browse through pages of entries, some cat’s even containing repeated posts, to the point of it might as well just be one long list of all entries.
I’m hoping that with a similar plugin from you, it will list all the categories: Bodybuilding, Dating, Exercise, etc. Then, when you click on Bodybuilding, it expands to list the titles in that category, and when you click on Dating, it expands to list the titles in that category, and so on.
I’m starting to understand a LITTLE bit more about previously foreign terms like “css”, “php”, etc., so I was even thinking, “Hmmm, maybe I will try to go into the plugin folder and see if I can just find out how to substitute “category” for “date”?”. Obviously, once I opened the file, I quickly learned that I’ve got a LONG way to go before attempting anything like that, and am in awe of people like you that churn these things out like robots lol.
Hey Rich, you’re running WordPress 2.0.4, so I suggest upgrading to either 2.0.10 or 2.2 and that will fix you up as I did some database caching fixes that are not in 2.0.4.
Let me know if you want some help in upgrading your WordPress install.
I’ve now installed this on two sites, and think it’s great – thanks!
I did find a conflict with the Exec-PHP plugin, which I had to disable in order to get this to work, fyi. More info on the plugin here. Thankfully, I just installed that plugin and didn’t have anything dependent on it yet, so it was an easy fix.
I do have a feature request, though – I’d love to have the ability to exclude a particular category from the archive (namely, my automatic Twitter updates – I figured out how to exclude them from my homepage/monthly archives, but don’t know how to do it in your code.)
Thanks again for your work; will send some Paypal love shortly after I restock my account…
Hi Betsy.
With the latest release of my plugin, there isn’t any need to use Exec-PHP or any other plugin to allow PHP code within a page.
What URL did you install my plugin on so I can take a look?
Thank you for your support by the way.
I’ll see what I can do about your feature request as I have a list of some things for an upcoming release.
Do we still need runphp to use this plugin? I have it installed already from the previous version of srg, and it works fine with the newest edition.
But if it’s unnecessary, I’ll drop runphp. Please let me know.
Thanks!
There’s a huge lack of recent activity on this topic, but I’ll give it a shot nonetheless.
I would like to turn the month links into “true” toggles. Right now, when you click on a month to expand the articles underneath, there’s no way for you to undo that action. I would like to be able to click back on that particular month and it collapse the list.
Any help on this would be great.
I’ve followed all the directions, but when I put the code into a page or the sidebar, it’s completely blank. What am I doing wrong?
Thanks!
Kelly