Sitemapper_XH - a CMSimple_XH Plugin

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Sitemapper_XH automatically creates an XML-Sitemap of your CMSimple_XH installation. For detailed information about Sitemaps see sitemaps.org.

Please do read this documentation, before you encounter any problems!

Requirements

Sitemapper_XH is a plugin for CMSimple_XH. It requires a UTF-8 encoded version.

Installation

The installation is done as with many other CMSimple_XH plugins. See the CMSimple_XH wiki for further details.

  1. Backup the data on your server.
  2. Unzip the distribution on your computer.
  3. Upload the whole directory sitemapper/ to your server into the CMSimple_XH plugins directory.
  4. Set write permissions for the subdirectories config/ und languages/. The Sitemap files will be created in the CMSimple root directory, so it's has to be writable too. Alternatively it's possible to create the Sitemap files manually, and set write permissions only for these.
  5. Switch to "Sitemapper" in the back-end to check if all requirements are fulfilled.

Settings

The plugin's configuration is done as with many other CMSimple_XH plugins in the website's back-end. Select "Sitemapper" from "Plugins".

You can change the default settings of Sitemapper_XH in "Config". Hints for the options will be displayed when hovering over the help icons with your mouse. The most important setting is canonical hostname. You should enter the preferred way of calling your domain, i.e. www.example.com or example.com.

Localization is done in "Language". You can translate the character strings to your own language or customize them according to your needs.

Usage

Sitemapper_XH creates and updates Sitemaps for your website: a Sitemap index file will be put in the root directory of CMSimple_XH, and an additional Sitemap file will be created for each installed language. All published pages that are not hidden will be included to the Sitemap. Additionally hidden pages will be included when "ignore hidden pages" is set to "0".

The Sitemap files will be updated automatically every time you make changes in the editor, one of the pagedata tabs above the editor, in Menumanager or Pagemanager_XH.

You can check the generated Sitemaps in the plugin administration in "Sitemaps".

The simplest way too make the Sitemap available to search engines is to put the following line to your robots.txt:

Sitemap: http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml

Of course you have to adjust this to your domain name. Another possibility is to submit your Sitemap to the search engines directly.

It is possible to override the default settings of "changefreq" and "priority", which are defined in the plugin config, for each page in the pagedata tab "Sitemap" above the editor. For details on this settings, see XML tag definitions.

Limitations

Sitemapper_XH will only list the actual pages of CMSimple_XH's content. Additional content that is managed by plugins, e.g. forums or blogs, will not be included to the Sitemap file.

When pages are added or deleted from the editor, the generated sitemap files are not correct, unless the content is saved again from the editor. As workaround just save the page again directly after adding or deleting a page.

Pages hidden with #CMSimple hide# (or by a plugin such as Memberpages_XH or Register_XH that will dynamically insert #CMSimple hide# for some pages) will never be excluded from the Sitemap, except when you call "Sitemaps" from the plugin's administration. As workaround you should always do this, before you logout. For multilingual sites, you have to do it for each language.

License

Sitemapper_XH is licensed under GPLv3.

© 2011-2013 Christoph M. Becker

Czech translation © 2011-2012 Josef Němec
Polish translation © 2012 Kamill Krzes
Slovak translation © 2012 Dr. Martin Sereday

Credits

Sitemapper_XH was inspired by Simmyne.

The plugin icon was designed by Wendell Fernandes. Many thanks for publishing this icon as freeware.

This plugin uses free applications icons from Aha-Soft. Many thanks for making these icons freely available.

Many thanks to the community at the CMSimple_XH-Forum for tips, suggestions and testing. Particularly I want to thank Ulrich for being the first beta tester of Sitemapper_XH. And many thanks to sareide, who detected a severe bug regarding the URLs of subsite/second language pages.

Last but not least many thanks to Peter Harteg, the "father" of CMSimple, and all developers of CMSimple_XH, without whom this amazing CMS wouldn't exist.