In older versions of Drupal, the Archive module was included by default. For whatever reason, they decided to take it out of core. What the module would do would just create listings of your sites content by archives of certain dates.

I wanted to achieve a simple effect doing the same thing. I did take a look at the Archive module, which you can still install. However, I didn't really like it. The calendar block that it generated did not fit correctly in my block. It did give the ability to sort by type, but for a small site like mine, that is really not a big deal. I found a great tip using the Views module, that I would like to pass along. All credit goes to http://drupal.org/node/52037.

First, I went into my views menu and chose "Import". I cut and paste the following code into the block: