In my opinion, date-based archives have little to no value. People need context and a date doesn't provide any other than to indicate something isn't current. I'm never going to go to a site and see what they published in August 2012 -- why would I?

A nice tag or category list would be far more useful. Of course, tags and categories can also be overused making them overwhelming. An author-based archive could also be useful if different authors have different areas of focus.