How to create and automate the generation of your store sitemap?
A site map, or a site index like some prefer to call it, is a web page that lists all (or most of) the pages of your web site. The links listed on that page are typically
organized in a hierarchical fashion. This page is created to help visitor to find information on your web site, but is mostly used by search engines to help them do a
complete crawl of your web site.
The creation an update of that sitemap page can be done manually, but why? Your store includes a module that allows you to generate
and have this page automatically updated. You only have to do the configuration once.
Although done thru a dynamic process the the sitemap module will save the
content of the sitemap page in a static page content which filename is 'sitemap.html'.
Creating the sitemap static page
If you want to use the sitemap module you will need to create a static page which file name is ‘sitemap.html’.
When you create a static page, one of the field that
is required on the page is the filename. This field is always filled out with a default name. When creating the sitemap static page you should name this page
'sitemap.html' like it is shown on this example below:
As you can see, only the ‘Page file’ field has to have the name ‘sitemap.html’, the other fields do not have any restriction.
Creating and automating the sitemap generation
The creation and automatic schedule setting is done via the ‘sitemap setup’ interface. To display that interface, select the 'SITE MAP setup' option from the 'SEO' menu section:
The following interface will display:
From this interface you can do a manual generation of the sitemap by clicking on the ‘Generate site map NOW’ button. The other checkboxes are used to enable
or disable the inclusion of manufacturer and Help related pages in the sitemap.
Automatic schedule: If you select the ‘Enable automatic daily regeneration’ checkbox (recommended), the sitemap will be regenerated daily sometime after midnight.
