[wp-hackers] Should Monthly Archive Pages ever return 404?

[Stephen Rider]

Mike --

Your argument borders on /reducto ad absurdum/.  Respectfully  
submitted...

On Mar 9, 2009, at 4:13 PM, Mike Little wrote:

> You now have the situation when every possible date-based URI
> from the year zero onwards is valid, presumably including the ones in
> the future, forever!

Not unless you code it that way.  Try this:

Anything from the month of the first post, to the present month, has a  
valid "month" archive page.

You're looking at it from an absolutist coder stance.  I'm looking  
from the end user's POV.  If example.com/blog/2008/06 is a valid  
archive page, and example.com/blog/2008/08 is a valid archive page,  
then I would expect example.com/blog/2008/07 to be valid as well, even  
if July has no posts.

I guess my main question is this:  CAN this reasonably be done in a  
plugin?  If it can, without being too grossly complicated, I would  
probably be fine leaving it to a plugin to fix if I wanted it.

Stephen

-- 
Stephen Rider
http://striderweb.com/