After learning how to create a simple page template in the recipe Creating a simple page template, you're probably brimming with ideas for custom page templates that you can provide for your theme. However, if you're going to take the time to create any page templates at all, you should make sure that you provide your users with a useful Archives template.
The Archives template can contain many things, but its main purpose is to help your users navigate around your blog in a way that makes sense to them. As such, it should almost always include a post archive by month, and a list of the categories on your blog. In this recipe, we'll be providing just that.
To properly use the techniques in this recipe, you'll need to be working with a theme that you previously acquired or developed. If you haven't started developing a custom theme yet, I recommend using the Thematic theme. It can be freely downloaded from the WordPress.org Theme Repository at...