@teefers suggested a feature in RW9 that would allow adding pages to the autogenerated sitemap when they are not “show(n) in navigation.”
Any ideas on a better way to do this now? I have RW8 and Stacks only (no Foundation, etc).
I’ve seen YourHead Software’s Sitemap 14.95 stack – will that do it? I couldn’t tell from their docs.
My current workaround is putting all pages in Navigation subcategories, but it is very cluttered, and on mobile, all the links are expanded taking up the whole view (Artful theme). See image.
OR a way to keep the navigation submenus and keep them closed on mobile until clicked?
A separate option for adding to sitemap. Right now if you “remove” a page from navigation, it removes it from the sitemap.
Quite often you don’t want a page in the general navigation (links in a footer as an example) but still want it in the sitemap.
There are two alternatives that I’ve used that can give you more finite control of the xml sitemaps.
You should keep in mind that search engine crawlers will find and index every page on a site, even if it’s not on the XML sitemap. They have the name ”crawler” because they crawl every link they find. The XML sitemap is a starting point for them, so more than likely pages that are in the XML sitemap may get indexed a little faster.
The two products (both about $15) that I have experience with are:
Sitemap plus - This is a RapidWeaver Plugin that gives you a bit more control of the xml sitemap, including the option of listing pages that are marked not to be in the RapidWeaver navigation.
Integrity Plus - This is a stand-alone product that will build an XML Sitemap for any site not just RapidWeaver. It has the advantage of being able to include pages that are built outside of Rapid Weaver, like Armadillo, Poster Stack or anything. If it on the website, it can be included in the XML sitemap. It also has the added benefit of checking every link on your site both internal and external and report any broken links.
Doug,
Thank you for this and your insights on search index indexing with and without sitemaps.
For better search engine results, maybe I should look beyond the sitemapping tools.
On a wordpress site years ago the SEO plugins required a fair amount of ongoing attention and upgrades. I am wondering if SEO Helper is worth the effort vs just using the built in features of RW.
Thanks again!
That’s a great tip. And thanks for the discussion on sitemaps.
For now, I’ll just generate the sitemap inside RW with all the pages shown in navigation, then turn off “Generate Search Engine Sitemap.” Or use xml-sitemaps.com.
I will dig a bit deeper into the value of SEO Helper. If anyone has thoughts on SEO Helper for a small site, I would appreciate it.
