What’s a sitemap and why is it important?
Sunday, March 16th, 2008Unfortunately not everything I’m doing is going to be in an orderly fashion. Setting up a “sitemap” is a multi-step process that is done after the blog is set up. I have yet to complete the “How to set up a blog” article set but since this is a living breathing diary about setting up a blog, I have to document every step of the way.
A “Sitemap” is defined as by sitemaps.org as:
Sitemaps are an easy way for webmasters to inform search engines about pages on their sites that are available for crawling. In its simplest form, a Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site.
Wow, this seems pretty important and since I’ve already submitted my site to Google and the “googlebot” is already visiting my site (crawling it) better get this set up ASAP. Luckily since this is a WordPress operation (grin), many plugins (application extensions) are available, including one that automates the “sitemap.xml” file creation process, all I have to do is install it and configure.
The sitemap extension that I have chosen for this site for generating the “sitemap.xml” file is (drum roll):
Google XML Sitemap Generator for Wordpress by arnebrachhold.de
Download the plugin, follow the instructions and it should work. Probably the most complicated part is to change the permissions per the instructions to allow the plugin to “create / write” the .xml sitemap files. These are the specific instructions to install and configure this plugin:
1. Upload the full directory into your wp-content/plugins directory
2. Use your favourite FTP program to create two files named sitemap.xml and sitemap.xml.gz and make them writable via CHMOD 666. More information about CHMOD and how to make files writable is available at the [WordPress Codex](http://codex.wordpress.org/Changing_File_Permissions) and on [stadtaus.com](http://www.stadtaus.com/en/tutorials/chmod-ftp-file-permissions.php). Making your whole blog directory writable is NOT recommended due to security reasons.
4. Activate the plugin at the plugin administration page
5. Open the plugin configuration page, which is located under Options -> XML-Sitemap and build the sitemap the first time. If you get a permission error, check the file permissions of the newly created files.
6. The plugin will automatically update your sitemap of you publish a post, so theres nothing more to do :)blockquote>
