Well, like the title says, I got the archive to work properly, all it took was about two minutes of coding. The solution I applied might not be very stylish to look at but at least it fails gracefully and the archive page is working now.
In other news, I've so far had about 2.5L of Pepsi Max tonight, I suspect I'll either have a heart attack or still be awake this time tomorrow. I've been working on the new design for the site but so far I'm just toying with various ideas and the colors will probably be the same if I ever get around to finishing it.