List archive year – post by post

Here is a strip down of something similar I’ve done a while ago.

Here is what the code basically does is:

• First, it retrieves the date of the first post on the block.

• Secondly, the current date is retrieved.

• These two values are fed into a range() function to get all years in between

• A foreach loop get each year separately and that is returned into a custom WP_Query to retrieve posts in that specific year

What you need to do:

• Add the relevant HTML mark-up that fits your need

• Sort posts in the order you want

• Add extra parameters if necessary to suite your needs

Here is the code:

<?php
$oldest = get_posts( 'post_type=post&post_status=publish&posts_per_page=1&order=ASC' );
$oldest_date = $oldest[0]->post_date;

$first_date = date('Y', strtotime($oldest_date));
$todays_date = date('Y');

$year_range = range($todays_date, $first_date);
foreach ($year_range as $year) { 
    echo '<h2>' . $year . '</h2>';

    $args = array(
        'posts_per_page'    => -1,
        'post_type'         => 'post',
        'post_status'       => 'publish',
        'year'              => $year,
    );

    $yearly_posts = new WP_Query($args);

    if($yearly_posts->have_posts()) {
        echo '<ul>';
            while($yearly_posts->have_posts()) { 
                $yearly_posts->the_post();
                    echo '<li>' . get_the_title() . '</li>';
            }
        echo '</ul>';
    }
}
wp_reset_postdata();                
?>