SEO: Sitemap

[alledia]

Short description

* Option of an automatically generated XML and HTML sitemap
* The location of the sitemap.xml to be included in robots.txt:

Sitemap: http://www.mysite.com/sitemap.xml

Expected benefits/ Problem solved

Prevents the problem of webpages being alienated by helping search engine robots see the whole site.

Comments/References

Joomap is a good example of the simple HTML and XML sitemap, but there is no adding of the sitemap address into the robots.txt. Currently the only way for sitemaps to be discovered is if the sitemap is manually added to robots.txt of Google's Webmaster Tools / Yahoo Site Explorer.

http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.php is the center for efforts to provide a Yahoo, Google and MSN-friendly sitemap format.

[AmyStephen]

IMO - this is best accomplished as an extension.

[ircmaxell]

I agree with Amy. Sitemaps are not something trivial to design. They rely on every extension reporting every possible URL to the sitemapping component. Since most 3pd's wouldn't put this functionality in themselves (if because of lack of knowledge, or not wanting to do the work, for example), who would add this functionality? Would it be a plugin? Given that, I think it's best left to the 3pd to create a sitemap tool (there already exist some good ones, but you'll notice they are quite limited on the URLs they can provide)...

[alledia]

I guess my reason for proposing this is for exactly the reasons outlined by Anthony.

If there was a default sitemap it would be easier for developers to support.

Currently they need to think about Joomap, XMap, SEF Service Map and more. The result is that they often don't think of any sitemaps and Joomla 1.0's sitemaps aren't much use for anything outside of core content.

[Nakebod]

Difficult one

Freedom to choose the component you want is very great.
The currently available sitemap's are all great, they all have (personal) pro's and con's.
But the main reason why they "fail" is, like already stated, other component's don't "report" their URL's/content to the sitemap.

A basic sitemap component only supports Joomla's default content, and nothing else.
So the sitemap developers need to build many plugins for their own sitemap component, to have a full site in the sitemap, and not just 1 part.
Every developer needs to re-invent the wheel imho.

For example, I'm using Xmap on a customers site, and I love this component.
The developer (Or maybe even Xmap enthusiasts) created ~30 plugins to support the most favorite/popular component to show in Xmap.
And still there are hundreds, no, thousands of components which aren't supported.

In my opinion it would be better if all the component developers can use Joomla's API to use the sitemap.
It's not to let the sitemap developers throw away their work, if they want, they can continue to develop: Freedom of choice!
With the API it is for every developer easy to put the component's content in the sitemap.

Of course they don't need to use this, if they don't want, or not know about it.
Larger/popular component's would be glad (I hope...) if something like this is available.

Conclusion: I would vote yes for a default Joomla Sitemap component with API.
3pd's can continue if they want, maybe it would be also possible to use the API, so they don't need to write their own plugins anymore.

[godmode]

from where can i download this extension?

[motwguy]

What would be helpful, would be a tick-box to include/exlclude content from the sitemap.

[guruananthe]

you can link the sitemap.xml in bottom of the Home page so that Google will index that soon compare to robots.txt

[motwguy]

Bam! It just hit me that Sitemap and the new Canonical Tag must agree. So while it's not mandatory that these come from the same source it is important to ensure these play well together. (duh!)

[krick]

I agree that a sitemap needs to be core functionality in Joomla with an API that mod authors can use to include/hide URLs generated by their mod. By having sitemap in the Joomla core, it can be integrated with mods like SH404SEF much easier.

[juanparati]

Add a native sitemap include add a native control panel component for control the behavior of the sitemap. Using 3rd party extensions for this purpose we can control the sitemap like what menus we want view, the subelements that we want to show (categories, articles, etc), if we want to show the map in 2, 3 or 4 columns, etc.

I think that would be a good idea add a new Helper class for generate sitemaps or component information structure (Ex,Sections -> Categories -> Articles or Elements->Subelements).

Also we can include a optional extra file into the components like route.php but called map.php (For example) for help to generate the sitemaps.

Actually some mapping components like XMap from Vargas, are using extensions for help to generate maps of the "non-core" components.

[RickGlaser]

Xmap has been the greatest sitemap IMO. It has great plugins for people using Sobi, and other popular components.

[williwild]

Guys? I am no Joomla expert, but I have alot of experience trying to figure out what to do in Joomla. I'm a fairly decent student and this issue of sitemapping has me concerned.
I am not able to go beyond the menu items in Xmap. Agreeably the best 3pd out there.
Solution: I use sef to make URLs reasonable, what if the sef had the ability to make a menu of urls the user wanted to include in the sitemap hierarchy? I would be able to pick a section, category and whatever articles I wanted the sitemap to include. These URLs are already made by the sef and they are all listed. If one could simply choose which ones to include, this would make a great sitemap.
Then there would need to be a way to run through the links on in the sitemap and wow, all googlebot has to do is follow the breadcrumbs.
is this possible?

[joomfriend]

What would be helpful, would be a tick-box to include/exlclude content from the sitemap.

I can't agree more. When I use 3rd party sitemap generator (Online sitemap builder), even non-important URLs (e.g. Ads/banner Urls) are picked up. I have to manually remove them one by one. It will be good to have a tick-box to include/exclude content from the sitemap.