The website has no accessible sitemap.xml file???

+1 For Google XML sitemaps plugin.

People often confuse the two types of sitemaps that are common. (1) The website "Site Map" page and (2) The Sitemap.xml file

I publish a WordPress theme that has an onboard "Sitemap" page, and from some of the questions I receive about this topic, I think its important to note the differences between an onsite sitemap (mostly meant for human eyes) and an XML based sitemap (mostly meant to be machine read).

When you see a "Sitemap" link on a website menu, its typically going to link to a listing of all of the pages, posts, categories and tags on the site, along with convenient links to each piece of content to help the viewer navigate the site in one glance.

However, when people refer to "Sitemaps" in the context of an action like "submitting a sitemap", its usually a completely different entity than the sitemap that visitors view. Its usually an xml file that is only accessed and read by machines in order to catalog the most up to date contents of the site, along with a few other factors such as last update, update frequency, relative importance of each page, etc...

The latter is particularly true when you are talking about the sitemap.xml file that is required by tools such as Google Webmaster Tools for proactive indexing purposes.

In theory, you could merge the two together and provide a single solution for both, and I'm working on that as a lower priority addition to my WP theme, however, in 99% of the cases, you are talking about two separate things: sitemap page vs sitemap.xml file

Hope that helps clarify the difference for someone. I get this question often.

~ s