How to do a sitemap?

13 years ago

Why would you want to add it manually?

All you need to do is make sure your navigation is working properly and people can easily navigate your site.

The primary purpose of a sitemap is so the bots can crawl all the content of your site in the event your navigation isn't very good. The google plugin works great for this and adds the extra "insurance" that your sites content gets crawled. Without it there are times that Google may chose not to dig too deep in your content via navigation... with it, they usually do.

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LilBlackDress 13 years ago

I use the XML sitemap plug in for the spiders and the free Dagon Design Sitemap plug in for people. Works really well. If you need help with it, PM me.
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davejug1

13 years ago

Ok Maxim, what you are looking at here are two different things

1) A sitemap
2) A Sitemap

Notice the subtle difference?

The first is a HTML sitemap allowing your visitors to navigate your site easily. It is there purely for aesthetic purposes. Whereas the capitalized Sitemap is an XML file which search engine spiders use to navigate your site. You can use both of course.

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CMartin

13 years ago

Originally Posted by davejug1

Ok Maxim, what you are looking at here are two different things

1) A sitemap
2) A Sitemap

Notice the subtle difference?

The first is a HTML sitemap allowing your visitors to navigate your site easily. It is there purely for aesthetic purposes. Whereas the capitalized Sitemap is an XML file which search engine spiders use to navigate your site. You can use both of course.

You usually differentiate each other by the use of the "XML" word (XML Sitemap) and not because of the capitalized "S" letter.

One is a regular HTML document and the other is a XML document (that uses the Sitemap Protocol).

Before there was XML Sitemaps it was advisable to have a Sitemap (HTML) on your site not only to help visitors but also to help search engines' robots (crawlers) to find all your pages.

Carlos

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Microsys

13 years ago

You may be interested in this sitemaps comparison article which explains and shows code examples of all common sitemap file format

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Sohel Parvez

13 years ago

Create your Google Sitemap Online - XML Sitemaps Generator

You may use free XML Sitemaps Generator, It is search engine friendly

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Brian Alaway 13 years ago

If you think a sitemap is just for the search engines, you may want to rethink that:
Apple - Site Map
Sitemap | SAP
Oracle Site Maps

Of course, if you're throwing up a five page site, then maybe not but in that case you don't need a plugin either.
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Lloyd Buchinski

13 years ago

I normally do an xml sitemap just for the search engines. I use an online generator. But I do appreciate the html sitemaps for larger sites.

With lenovo.com for example the sitemap made it easy to find their refurbished computer section. It was the only place I've ever seen a link to that section, and I've spent a lot of time on that site.

Especially for large sites it serves a practical purpose. The ones I've seen are usually just a list of links, but I've been thinking of doing something like that with maybe a few notes added after the link for some of the pages.

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CMartin

13 years ago

Originally Posted by Maxim Ross

Now I have a plugin, "XML Sitemaps for google", but that only produces an XML output, nothing pretty at all to look at!

So how should i go about adding a sitemap - do one manually or use the plugin and somehow format the output to be nice for people?

XML Sitemaps are only for search engines - not visitors.

If you want to have a regular Sitemap (aka HTML Sitemap), there are several plugins that allows to create one. Just take a look here at WP Plugins:
WordPress › Search for html sitemap « WordPress Plugins
WordPress › archive « Tags « WordPress Plugins
WordPress › sitemap « Tags « WordPress Plugins

From a fast search I found these ones:
WordPress › HTML Page Sitemap « WordPress Plugins
WordPress › WP Multilingual Sitemap « WordPress Plugins
WordPress › WP Archive-Sitemap Generator « WordPress Plugins

There are others with different layouts - just search.

...

Anyway, if your blog only have few pages there's no need to have a regular/HTML Sitemap. If you have categories, that's one way for visitors to find content. Also there are the archive pages.

HTH
Carlos

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Alex Nash

13 years ago

As already stated above by all warriors:
XML - For search engine
HTML/Text - For visitors to browse on your site a little bit easier.

I would suggest to do it all manually. But otherwise, google for a "text sitemap generator", should be at least one that's good.

~Alex Nash