= SiteMap =

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. See http://www.sitemaps.org/ for details.

== Purpose ==

Creates a sitemap for assisting search engine crawling. Can be added via the [[http://www.google.com/webmasters/|Google Webmasters Tool]], [[https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/mysites|Yahoo Site Explorer]], [[http://webmaster.live.com/|Live Search Webmaster Central]], etc.


== Usage ==

Append `?action=sitemap` on any URL (best for the FrontPage). Put this as sitemap in the [[https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/|Google Webmasters Tool]].

These are the steps to submit the sitemap to Google:

 1. Log in and make sure you selected the right domain (e.g. http://example.com or http://www.example.com).

 1. Make sure you have been confirmed as the site's owner.

 1. Switch to "Sitemaps" and submit a new sitemap of the type "common sitemap" by adding an URL like http://www.example.com/MyName?action=sitemap .

Note this will work only if the URL is for the same domain as the one you used to log in ('''www.'''example.com vs. example.com). Don't add anything to the sitemap's content, nor change the URL, just use http://www.example.com/MyName?action=sitemap .

It is important to use {{{http://www.example.com/FrontPage?action=sitemap}}} (or something like that) because {{{http://www.example.com/?action=sitemap}}} does not work!


== Procedure ==

see FeatureRequests/GoogleSitemapGeneration

=== Confirming ownership of your site for Google ===

When confirming that you own the site for Google, you have two options - adding a special meta-tag provided by Google to the HTML, or uploading a special HTML page.

To confirm via meta-tag, you can use the `html_head` variable in `wikiconfig.py`. Add something like:
{{{
   html_head = '<meta name="google-site-verification" content="g00pthatGoogleProvidesAsS3cretK3y" />'
}}}

Once your site is verified, you can remove the meta-tag.

== Examples ==
{{{
http://moinmo.in/FrontPage?action=sitemap

http://moinmo.in/FrontPage?action=sitemap&underlay=0
}}}

== Copyright ==


= ToDo =



= Discussion =
I would prefere to have a script or integrate this into the moin maint stuff, because normaly you will continual generate sitemaps. I do this with a cronjob togehter with lynx, but a simple xml output would be nicer. -- MarcelHäfner <<DateTime(2009-10-08T17:30:19+0200)>>
{{{
05       05 * * *  /usr/bin/lynx http://my.site.com/?action=sitemap -source > /home/my.site.com/wiki/htdocs/themexy/sitemap.xml
}}}