How To Create Automatic Sitemap in WordPress

18th Feb 2010 | Posted by Eko S. | 26 Comments

A site map (or sitemap) is a list of pages of a web site accessible to crawlers or users. It can be either a document in any form used as a planning tool for web design, or a web page that lists the pages on a web site, typically organized in hierarchical fashion. This helps visitors and search engine find pages on the site.
This is not “Google sitemap”!

sitemap550

Why Use Sitemap ?

To improve the navigation of your site so :
- the user can quckly find a specific post he wants.
- the user can quickly see and get an idea how big the blog is and get an overview what the blog is writing about.
All your post are linked to form a sitemap page, used by search engines to index your site.

How to?

Credit : Thanks to Jim Westergren for this tutorial, we improve a little bit and try on wordpress 2.9.1, it’s working good .

You can see demo : our sitemap

Steps :

Download and activate these plugins :
- Exex-PHP plugins that makes it possible for you to parse PHP in your blog posts.
- WP Category Post Plugin, that makes it possible for you to list posts per category.

plugin

Create a new page (not post) with this code :

<h2>
<a name="contents">Jump to a category section :</a>
</h2>
<ul>
    <li style="padding: 5px 0 5px 0;">
    <a href="#link_anchor_category_name1">Category_name1</a>
    </li>
    <li style="padding: 5px 0 5px 0;">
    <a href="#link_anchor_category_name2">Category_name2</a>
    </li>
    <li style="padding: 5px 0 5px 0;">
    <a href="#link_anchor_category_name3">Category_name3</a>
    </li>
</ul>
<h1 style="margin-top:10px;">
<a name="link_anchor_category_name1">Category_name1</a>
</h1>
<div style="margin-left:40px;">
    <ul>
        <?php
            wp_cat_posts(6);
        ?>
   </ul>
   <a href="#contents">Back to Contents^</a>
</div>
<h1 style="margin-top:10px;">
<a name="link_anchor_category_name2">Category_name2</a>
</h1>
<div style="margin-left:40px;">
   <ul>
       <?php
           wp_cat_posts(2);
       ?>
   </ul>
   <a href="#contents">Back to Contents ^</a>
</div>
<h1 style="margin-top:10px;">
<a name="link_anchor_category_name3">Category_name3</a>
</h1>
<div style="margin-left:40px;">
   <ul>
       <?php
            wp_cat_posts(4);
       ?>
   </ul>
   <a href="#contents">Back to Contents ^</a>
</div>

Copy and paste on your a new page editor (HTML section)

page-edited

The numbers
```
<?php
     wp_cat_posts(43);
?>
```
are the IDs of the categories. You can find your ID of the categories on Dasboard > Post > Categories and hover a category name, you can see the link address, along with the category ID.
Repeat this code until you cover all your categories.
Publish your page on your about page, footer or at some other visible place, make a link pointing to your site map for full visitor and search engine link benefit.

It’s done, of course you can change the code of this sitemap appropriate design you like.

Feedback

How about you? How do you create a sitemap? Or do you have a problem with this tutorial? Please share with us, in comment section below. Thanks.

18 Comments to “How To Create Automatic Sitemap in WordPress”

Add Comments (+)

WP Super Ninja says:

February 19, 2010 at 07:33

Or you could just use this:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sitemap-generator/

Reply
- Eko S. says:
  
  February 19, 2010 at 08:31
  
  Hi, thanks for the resource…
  
  Reply
looking for a history of italian cooking says:

February 23, 2010 at 08:30

I will be coming back here again and again, and I will tell my friends as well. This is a great site. See yer! Jodie May

Reply
- Eko S. says:
  
  February 24, 2010 at 02:01
  
  Hi Jodie, that’s nice…thanks
  
  Reply
Alison Vanlue says:

February 26, 2010 at 18:01

Definitely most of the free templates look nice but you may be unhappy with the experience that these templates offer. For instance, you will find that the designs are generally too simple, and the font sizes and colors are not in right place. You can always install a premium template and can correct all these issues. Simply by giving a more positive user experience, you are encouraging visitors to stay longer on your blog that is always a good idea. Nobody wants to chase their visitors by having bad designs!

Reply
- Eko S. says:
  
  March 1, 2010 at 17:15
  
  Hi, Alison that’s great advice for us…We will always learning to improve and develop our themes. Tomorrow we will upload a new theme, we hope you give advice and input to us again.
  Thanks, your feedback makes us better.
  
  Reply
forex robot says:

February 28, 2010 at 17:41

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Reply
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Reply
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March 11, 2010 at 16:13

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Reply
Val Lauver says:

March 19, 2010 at 18:21

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Reply
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March 28, 2010 at 17:00

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Reply
May Obhof says:

May 7, 2010 at 07:09

Hello admin, top-notch article. I’d like to quote some of the info on my website – I hope you don’t mind if I post a url back?

Reply
- Eko S. says:
  
  May 7, 2010 at 22:35
  
  Hi, Thanks… you love this article, it’s not a problem of course you can
  
  Reply
backlinking says:

May 15, 2010 at 09:16

I truly enjoyed reading through this post.Thanks.

Reply
Backlinking Guy says:

June 12, 2010 at 20:18

It’s fine to create sites, but unless you do extensive backlinking your hard work building sites will be for naught.

Reply
Copiatoare Second Hand says:

June 14, 2010 at 12:31

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Reply
Ziar Neamt says:

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Reply
Peter says:

June 22, 2010 at 08:51

Nice website. Very informative posts.

I’ll keep visiting this site…

Please keep adding new posts..

Regards,
Peter
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