2026-04-27 — Jan's Blog Archive follow-up

Source

Basecamp to-do "Add 'Archive' to the Blog, but differently" — Jan's Wed 11:24pm message:

Eric, instead of having Archive be like "local" or "national", can we add a sentence to the very bottom of only the All page, in small light font, that says "For archive of older blogposts, please click here." which then goes to an archive page.

This is the follow-up to the Apr 21 fix (PR #13, commit 90e3495) that removed the Archive filter pill from the blog. That fix only removed the UI; the archive WP category itself stayed in place.

What we built

Branch: feature/blog-archive-link (commit fbbca74, not pushed, awaiting Jan's reply).

• home.php — appended a conditional <p> after the pagination block. Only renders when $filter_type === 'all'. Small text-size-p-sm text-navy/50 line: "For archive of older blogposts, please click here." with the link wrapped in a get_category_by_slug( 'archive' ) null-check so it silently no-ops if the term ever gets deleted.
• category-archive.php — new theme-root template auto-routed by WordPress for /category/archive/. Compact list layout (title + excerpt + date with divider lines), 20 per page, Previous/Next pagination, "← Back to Blog" link, branded empty state. Closes with the same pledge_cta module as home.php.
• css/tailwind-output.css — rebuilt to compile divide-navy/10, md:pr-8, md:pt-1 used by the new template.

Verified locally

• /blog/?type=all — link appears, links to /category/archive/. Screenshot: ~/Desktop/blog-all-archive-link-desktop.png.
• /blog/ (National default) and /blog/?type=local — link does NOT appear. Confirmed via JS.
• /category/archive/ — renders with empty state ("No archived posts yet") and with seeded posts (temp WP-CLI assignments, then reverted). Screenshots: ~/Desktop/archive-page-empty-desktop.png, archive-page-populated-desktop.png, archive-page-populated-mobile.png.
• No console errors at any view.

What's blocking ship

The plumbing works. The Archive category is empty on both local and production (term_id=24, count=0). Until posts are tagged with the category, the archive page renders the empty state.

Production diagnosis: Production has 0 drafts but 9 posts in trash, all moved to trash on 2026-04-20 — one day before Jan asked us to remove the Archive pill. They date 2023-08 through 2024-12. Likely the older content Jan means by "archive."

Sent to Jan (Basecamp / email)

Jan — quick clarification before I wire up the archive: how do you want to decide what's archive vs active? I'm seeing 9 older posts (2023–2024) that got moved to trash on Apr 20 — are those what should live behind the archive link? And going forward, what's the rule editors should follow when adding new posts — date-based, or you flag them manually?

Next steps when Jan replies

• If the trashed posts are the archive content: restore them (wp post update <id> --post_status=publish), add the archive category to each, and update home.php query logic to exclude archive from National/Local/All views (otherwise they'd reappear in the main feed).
• Push feature/blog-archive-link, open PR, deploy to Flywheel.
• Update production cache (wp cache flush) and verify with ?nocache=1.

Decision pending

What's the editorial rule for "archive vs active"? Date-based, manual flag, or just "whatever Jan/the team decides at the time"? Will inform whether we need any automation (e.g., auto-archive posts older than X) or just a documented manual workflow.