Minutes, agendas and newsletters by year, without a category for every year.
Publish your meeting minutes archive on your own WordPress site. Members pick a year from a dropdown, search the archive as they type, and find the agenda beside the minutes. The year comes from each document’s date, so next January needs no new category.
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Fig. 1The actual plugin with the year filter on, showing sample minutes, newsletters and reports · Open the full demo · See it in your own colours →
01What it needs
What a minutes archive has to do.
Whoever keeps the minutes for a board, a committee, a parish, a club or a residents’ association hears the same requests year after year. A good archive answers them without an email to the secretary.
Find a meeting by year
The year filter · FreeA dropdown of the years your documents span, newest first, beside the category filter. The chosen year sits in the address bar, so a link to the 2024 minutes opens on 2024.
Agendas beside minutes
Categories and multi-select filters · FreeFile agendas, minutes, papers and newsletters in their own categories and show them in one library. Visitors tick the types they want, or you give each type a titled section with one search box across all of them.
Find what was decided
Search inside the documents · ProPro searches the text inside PDF, Word and OpenDocument files, so a search for a street name, a budget line or a motion finds the minutes that mention it. Old typed minutes scanned to PDF can be made searchable with optional OCR, which is off until you enable it.
Corrections without broken links
Replace the file · FreeWhen minutes are amended at the next meeting, replace the file on the same document. A link sent round last month opens the corrected version, and on Pro the earlier file stays in version history for your records.
Papers that are not for everyone
Access control · ProRestrict a committee’s category to a WordPress role or a shared password. Anyone else sees a padlocked title, or no entry at all if you choose to hide restricted documents.
Tell people what is new
Changelog and email digests · ProA document changelog page lists what was published or updated, newest first and grouped by month, and readers can subscribe to a daily or weekly email digest of the whole library or one category, such as Minutes.
02The year problem
Why the year belongs in the date, not in a category.
Most archives start with a folder per year. Here is why that stops working, and what to do instead.
The usual way to file minutes by year in WordPress is a category or folder called 2023, another called 2024, and so on. It works at first. Then each January someone has to remember to create the next one, the category list fills with numbers, and a document filed under the wrong year goes missing from the place people look for it.
FileDeck’s year filter reads the year from each document’s date instead. Set the date to the date of the meeting rather than the day you uploaded the file, and a 2019 newsletter files itself under 2019. The date column and the newest-first sort follow the same date. The dropdown appears once the library spans more than one year, and it lists only the years that hold a document.
To pin a page to a single year with no dropdown, add the year attribute: [filedeck category="minutes" year="2025"]. Already have year categories? Keep them while you move over. The filter reads dates, not category names, so the two can run side by side.
03Setting it up
A minutes archive in six steps.
The first four steps use the free plugin. Five and six are Pro, and you can add them later without rebuilding the archive.
1
A category per document typeFree
Minutes, Agendas, Newsletters, Annual reports: types, not years. Add a child category per committee if several bodies publish minutes. Create them under Documents → Document Categories.
2
Upload the back catalogueFree
Drop each type as a batch on Documents → Upload Documents (under Import & Export on Pro) with its category set. Titles come from file names, with hyphens and underscores turned into spaces and each word capitalised, so tidy the names first: “Committee minutes 12 March 2024” beats “scan0042”.
3
Date each documentFree
On each document’s edit screen, set its date to the meeting or issue date. The year filter, the date column and the sort all read it.
4
Publish the archiveFree
Add the Document Library block, or [filedeck category="minutes,agendas" show_year_filter="1" sort_by="date" sort_order="desc"]. To show the year filter on all your libraries, switch it on under Documents → Settings → Features. Full walkthrough.
5
Close the committee’s papersPro
Edit the committee’s category and tick roles under Restrict to roles, or set a password that readers enter once and stay unlocked for 24 hours; put a library scoped to that category on the page you give them, and it shows the password form. Restricting by role.
6
Add a what’s-new pagePro
Put [filedeck_changelog category="minutes,agendas" limit="50"] on a page. Then enable Change subscriptions under Documents → Settings → Lifecycle and add [filedeck_subscribe] so readers can sign up for a digest.
04What goes in
Documents the same archive holds.
A minutes archive tends to become the organisation’s whole document library. For councils, see FileDeck for local government; for clubs, unions and societies, see FileDeck for associations.
- Board & committee minutes
- Approved minutes for each meeting, dated by the meeting and found by year.
- Agendas & meeting papers
- Published ahead of the meeting in their own category, beside the minutes.
- Newsletters & bulletins
- A newsletter archive by year; the grid layout shows each issue as a card with a cover image if you set one.
- Annual reports & accounts
- Each year’s report and accounts, found with the same year dropdown.
- AGM notices & motions
- This year’s notice, proxy form and motions on one page, pinned with the year attribute.
- Rules & standing orders
- The current version at a link that stays the same when the rules are amended.
05Questions
What people ask about minutes archives.
How do I organise meeting minutes by year in WordPress?
Give each document its meeting date and switch on FileDeck’s year filter: a dropdown of the years the library spans appears beside the other filters, newest first. There is no category per year to create or maintain, and the filter is part of the free plugin. See the year filter guide.
Can I publish agendas and minutes on the same page?
Yes. Keep them in separate categories and scope one library to both; visitors tick either or both in the category filter. Or show a titled section per category with a single search box across all of them. Both are free.
Can people search inside old minutes?
With Pro, yes. Full-text search reads the text inside PDF, Word and OpenDocument files, so a phrase from the body of the minutes finds them. Minutes scanned from paper have no text to read until OCR runs; Pro includes optional OCR, which is off until you enable it, and files are processed and discarded rather than stored. See searching inside PDF files.
How do we keep draft minutes private until they are approved?
Save the document as a WordPress draft and it stays out of the library until you publish it. If the committee should read drafts on the site, file them on Pro in a category restricted to a role or a password, then move the approved version to the public category.
What if minutes are corrected after they are published?
Replace the file on the existing document. Its link stays the same, so anyone following an old link gets the corrected version, and the download count continues. Pro also archives the earlier file in version history.
Can members get an email when new minutes go up?
Yes, with Pro. Readers subscribe with a form on any page, confirm by email, and receive a daily or weekly digest (you set the frequency) of new and updated documents, for the whole library or a single category such as Minutes. Delivery uses your site’s email, so a host that cannot send mail needs an SMTP plugin. See subscriptions and digests.
Does it work as a newsletter archive too?
Yes. Newsletters behave like minutes: date each issue, switch on the year filter, and choose the grid layout if you want each issue shown as a card with a cover image. The table, grid, gallery and folders layouts, instant search and the year filter are all free.
Give members an archive they can search by year.
Free forever, no document limits, and a 30-day refund on Pro.
Or try the live demo first.