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[Dean]

Does anyone on this forum use XML sitemaps on their Wordpress blog.  I am aware of the Google Sitemap Generator for Wordpress, but I have run into issues using that plugin in the past.

According to the Google Webmaster Tools site there are various way of generating XML sitemaps, including online generators.

Anyone got any experience of these generators or got any recommendations?

Thanks.

[Nogg3r5]

Cant you use an RSS Feed?

[Dean]

I'm not sure that will work.  The XML that was generated for my site using one of the online generators (I used XML Sitemaps) includes XML tags like priority and frequency in the XML.  I don't think you would get that with a standard RSS feed.  The online generator worked fine but it did take between 5 and 10 minutes to crawl my site.

I don't think the Wordpress plugins I have seen offer a great advantage over the online generators.  The plugins just automates the process of updating your sitemap whenever the web site is updated, plus the plugins allow finer control to tweak things like priority and frequency.

I was hoping to find something that could generate an XML sitemap quicker than the 5 to 10 minutes the online generator took.

[Ryan Wagner]

The link you pointed to for the Google Sitemap Generator is what we use. It only takes a few seconds for it to generate that file and it will update itself every time you post a new article. On some of our blogs we have problems with version 3 (which is still in beta) and in those instances we just use version 2.

The RSS feed is not the same thing because Google requires that the sitemaps be in a special format. Not only that but most RSS feeds only have a very small portion of the articles in them so it would not benefit Google that much. The whole point of the RSS feed is to give Google a file that contains URL's to every single post that you have on your blog. That way they don't have to worry about manually crawling the site which can take forever, just as you have seen by generating the sitemap online which took 5 to 10 minutes. Google doesn't really  have that much time for each site.

[Dean]

Thanks.  I will have a look at that Wordpress plugin again.  The current problem I have is that as soon as I upload the plugin into the /wp-content/plugins folder I cannot access the plugin screen inside Wordpress to activate it, I just get a blank screen.  This problem occurs with both the beta and the stable version.  As soon as I delete the plugin from that folder I can load the plugins page fine.  The only thing I can think of is a possible clash with another plugin I already have installed.

[Ryan Wagner]

Hmm, that is very strange and it must be clashing with something else. Sorry, can't really help you there.