October 2008 Archives

As each day passes, more and more posts are added to our blog sites. I was thinking of what if the archives will reach ten years? Well, I dont have that much number of posts, probably my blog will still survive. What I'm more concerned about is the monthly archives displayed on the sidebar. It will be displaying a very long list of months year by year. There must be some way to arrange them yearly.

I figured, there are already many MT4 bloggers who may have implemented it like Beau and his Advanced Archive Widget. Unfortunately, what i was looking is to display my yearly based archives horizontally as opposite to the one Beau has done. The main reason why i wanted to display my yearly archive horizontally is because there might be not enough room as the years go by since the list is growing sideways.

I have experiemented my version with my blog for hours and ended up displaying the yearly archive using simple methods using lists. Here is my version below:

<mt:IfArchiveTypeEnabled archive_type="Yearly">
  <div class="widget-archive-yearly widget-archive widget">
    <h3 class="widget-header"><$mt:ArchiveTypeLabel$> <a href="<$mt:Link template="archive_index"$>">Archives</a></h3>
    <div class="widget-content">
      <mt:ArchiveList type="Yearly" sort_order="descend">
      <mt:ArchiveListHeader>
        <ul>
      </mt:ArchiveListHeader>
        <li class="widget-list-item"><a href="<$MTArchiveLink$>"><b><$mt:ArchiveDate format="%Y"$></b></a><br />
        <mt:ArchiveList type="Monthly" sort_order="ascend">
          <span>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="<$MTArchiveLink$>"><$mt:ArchiveDate format="%b"$></a> </span>
        </mt:ArchiveList>
        </li>
      <mt:ArchiveListFooter>
        </ul>
      </mt:ArchiveListFooter>
      </mt:ArchiveList>
    </div>
  </div>
</mt:IfArchiveTypeEnabled>

1. Create a Widget and paste the code above, save it as "Yearly Sidebar Archives" or any name you like.
2. On your Archive Templates, Edit the Entry Listing template
3. On the Template Options, Create an Archive Mapping of type Yearly
4. Choose your desired path eg. yyyy/index.html
5. Specify publishing option as Static
6. Hit Save and Publish
7. Navigate back to your Widgets template list at Design->Widgets
8. Choose which sidebar you wish to place your yearly archives by clicking it. I choose my primary sidebar since i want to replace my monthly archives into yearly archives.
   
9. Click on the Archives Widget at the Installed Widgets List
   
10. Place an ignore code around your monthly archive code
    

    <mt:Ignore>
    <mt:IfArchiveTypeEnabled archive_type="Monthly">
        <$mt:include widget="Monthly Archives"$>
    </mt:IfArchiveTypeEnabled>
    </mt:Ignore>

11. Insert the following code right below it.
    

    <mt:IfArchiveTypeEnabled archive_type="Yearly">
        <$mt:include widget="Yearly Sidebar Archives"$>
    </mt:IfArchiveTypeEnabled>

12. Republish your indexes and see the output at your main page.

WARNING: this is a useless post. You've been warned.

Its past midnight but I can't sleep despite not being able to sleep last night. I'm with the graveyard shift but there happens to be a scheduled office drill today that I was not invited but rather, I was being mandated to attend.

Still, I managed to attend to the office drill and of course I was late. I placed two toothpicks between my eyelids to prevent them from closing and dropped some Visine to get the red out in sixty seconds. Gee it did not help. A lesson not to believe everything you see on television.

 Everybody noticed when I arrived; it's like walking in an isle when you're getting married. It's a feeling that is so inspiring until the facilitator started to mention my mistakes and failures in the office. I felt I was pushed into a tub full of soap water. I consider it to be one of my most embarrassing moments. "I should have left earlier", I said it to myself, if I had some clothes to put on. But because I forgot to get my laundry yesterday which I believed my uniform was with it. To my surprise when I came home, it turned out to be placed right inside my closet. At that time, I had a feeling that my moronic side is starting to overpower me.

Then lunch came I'm still wet with soap all over my body and  I thought everybody forgot about my tardiness  but it seems I was wrong for I was again called to lead the prayer.  I don't have that priestly look; it's more of a punishment for being late. I tried to hide, not that I do not want to say the prayer but I don't want them to notice my eyes. So no more bath soap, this time it I was soaked with detergent.

The office drill didn't go along smoothly as planned.  Office drill is not a drill about digging something in the office or preventing fire accident but it was more of like a protocol drill to freshen up our team and getting the respective jobs done. The result was a successful failure, we totally sucked. It was expected anyway; otherwise we won't be having that sort of drill.

The afternoon came; the toothpicks between my eyelids were removed not because I'm not sleepy anymore but because they broke. Apparently, they can no longer handle the weight of my eyelids. So I got these 3 sachets of Nescafe instant coffee 3-in-1 mix in a single mug and drank it. It was so effective that up until now at 3AM, I'm still awake.