Previous versions of this plugin allowed only a single type of archive, controlled entirely from the settings page.
Version 1.8 is a lot more developer friendly: any options set on the settings page can be overwritten:
In your theme, you can now write:
<?php smart_archives('format=list&exclude_cat=123,543'); ?>
This works for the shortcode too. In any post or page, just write:
[smart_archives format=list exclude_cat=123,543]
What’s neat about this is that you can have more than one archive, or have the archive display differently in different parts of your site.