Old galleries are gone – here's a proper fix

Hey. Long-time user here. I'm used to going back through older galleries, sometimes 40+ pages deep in a channel. But now everything is capped at 10 pages . So yeah, something's broken.

I get the server load issue – bots hammering the database. No problem. But limiting to 10 pages is just a band-aid. It kills access to old content for real users like me.

Here's the proper fix, from a technical standpoint:
Add a "sort by year" filter or a date range picker.
That way, each query only hits a small slice of data (low server load), but users can still reach old galleries by selecting older years. No need for infinite scrolling or 100 pages. Just let me pick 2015 and see what's there.

Your site is great, and I've been around for a while. Would really appreciate if you implement this instead of the page limit. Thanks.