WordPress XML sitemaps

Whilst we're on the topic of sitemaps, after having generated XML sitemaps for the Google sitemaps option in Google webmaster tools, how do you create sitemaps for WordPress without all the manual labour?

Well, we did a little search on the web and found the excellent Dagon Design Sitemap Generator plugin for WordPress.

The instructions are pretty simple:

1. Download the plugin as a txt file to your local server
2. Rename the extension from .txt to .php
3. Upload the sitemap plugin to the wp-content/plugins/ folder of your live WordPress site
4. Go to your admin dashboard and select the "plugins" menu item
   
5. Activate the DD sitemap plugin fron the list of your plugins
   
6. Click the "options" menu button and in the sub-menu select the "DDsitemapGen" button
7. Configure the sitemap generator.

Easy, isn't it?

Well, the only thing the instructions were a little unclear about is how to get the sitemap showing. It's not hard, but a novice might miss a trick, so here's what you do:

8. Create a new "page" in WordPress and call it sitemap.
   
9. Insert the HTML comment into the page.
10. Publish your page.

You can then use this URL to create your xml sitemap in www.sitemapspal.com, save your sitemap.xml file to your server and then point Google sitemap at it :)

Follow this next link to see the WordPress sitemap in action. The plugin also has the option to show the sitemap xml link at the foot too, which is rather handy.

The other main options are listing by category, post date etc etc, so it's a pretty handy plugin to have alongside your WP Category Order plugin.