Archive by issue

If I understand the scope of your question, at the very least you’d need to rewrite the portions dealing with permalink structure. Not impossible, but not an simple hack.

As this only occurs bi annually I would put the link in manually.

to the coders:

is it possible to query the DB with a starting and ending date that encompass these periods that a link to these “archives” could be included in a page template so ajzeigart does not have to alter any core files?

I always first try and think of a solution that can be implemented by the end user in admin. Then we can can start hacking if need be. If your user put each post in 2 cats (think class) eg mystuff and fall; you could then use the cat functionality. No php needed. Well a bit.

actually, just have 2 main categories for fall and spring with subcategories specific for each year, then you can just link to the permalinks for those sub-cats, right?

Yup. That would do it. I create my own links a lot using that kind of technique.

Basically it would work by creating a category for every “issues”, i.e. a cat named “Spring 2005”, the next “Fall 2005″… ad infinitum.
And if the zine or what it is has sections (e.g. poems, reviews, humour) they can be subcats in the main category.
I’ve checked and you can even have subcats with the same name under different main categories.

When I need to I create a dedicated link cat Then I manually input my internal link. Using the cat selector I can then style it any which way. Nothing fancy.