Sitemaps

A sitemap gives you an easy overview over your website. It is very useful if you e.g. have a large website, many unconnected (sub)pages on your website or if you want search engines like Google to recognize and read it more effectively. A sitemap provides links for each of your (sub)pages. That way, a new website will be easier to find when searching for it on Google (Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1 Viewing the sitemap in frontend

Large sitemaps and timeouts

Please note that according to current standards, sitemaps should be no larger than 50MB (52,428,800 bytes) and contain a maximum of 50,000 URLs. This is normally not a problem unless you include lots of product links in the sitemap.

This means that if your site contains more than 50,000 URLs or your Sitemap is bigger than 50MB, you must create multiple Sitemap files and use a Sitemap index file. You should use a Sitemap index file even if you have a small site but plan on growing beyond 50,000 URLs or a file size of 50MB. A Sitemap index file can include up to 50,000 Sitemaps and must not exceed 50MB (52,428,800 bytes). You can also use gzip to compress your Sitemaps.

To create a sitemap

  • Select a page to add it to
  • Create a new paragraph
  • Attach the sitemap app to it

This gives you access to the app settings (Figure 2.1).

Figure 2.1 The app settings for the sitemap app

Using the settings, you can control the app behavior:

  • Select what to create a sitemap from; the current website, a specific website, or the subpages of a particular page
  • Select a start level and an end level
  • Check includes all pages if you want all pages on your website to show on the sitemap
  • Select an XSLT template for rendering the sitemap 

If you want to differentiate how a particular level is rendered, check the alternative stylesheet checkbox – this provides you with the following options for levels 1-5 (Figure 3.1):

Figure 3.1 Modifying the stylesheet in "Alternative Stylesheet"
  • Bullet: Change the icon next to the pages in the sitemap. Either choose an icon from the dropdown or upload one using the upload manager.
  • Font, Font size, Font Color: Customize the font, font size, and font color. You can insert a hexadecimal value manually or choose from the color palette.
  • Bold: If checked, the text is displayed in bold.

If you want to avoid the sitemap app, you can create your own page and give it the name sitemap.xml under the page settings exact url field. The same goes for /robots.txt.