Let’s chat about archiving…

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New Year, New You (Part 3)

Maybe you started a new semester at the beginning of the year, or maybe you’re kicking one off this week. Perhaps you follow trimesters, or things stay consistent for you throughout the entire year.

No matter what your schedule looks like, at some point we’re betting you’ll have a group of new staff ready to start publishing fresh content on your site. This raises an important question: How should we deal with the old stuff? Do we need to create an archive? 

Here’s our take on archiving…

WordPress – the content management system on your site – automatically archives everything by published date/time, so there’s really no need for you to do so manually.

All you need to do is begin posting new stories to your site’s categories whenever they’re ready. This will automatically refresh your homepage and push the older content out of view. But, those older stories will still be accessible via your navigation menus, category links, search, and staff profiles.

Our recommendation on creating an archive? Totally unnecessary. Instead, you can focus your attention elsewhere and let your site do the work for you.

But, if you absolutely must archive…

Try as we might, we know we won’t be able to convince all of you. So, if you’re still set on creating a dedicated archive, here’s what you’ll need to do.

  1. Create a new category for your archive content (e.g., Archive 2024-2025)

  2. Manually re-categorize all desired content into that new category. As part of this process, it’s up to you if you want to also keep that content in the original categories (e.g., News, Sports, etc.) or not.

  3. Decide how you want to make your archive category(ies) accessible. This typically involves editing your site’s navigation menus.

Now, we know what you might be thinking – That’s only three steps! How hard could it be? Trust us when we say that manually re-categorizing dozens (or hundreds) of stories will take a while. Make sure you’ve got the time, energy, and manpower to dedicate to it before making that decision.

Have any questions about archiving, categories, or any other site tools? We’re here to help!