Make Sitemap Page For WordPress

Posted by Jeff

on March 4, 2009

site Creating a sitemap page for your WordPress blog or WordPress site is good way to add navigation for your visitors. Supplying your visitors with an easy to navigate sitemap page can not only help your visitors find more information but also keep them on your WordPress site longer. This is not a a WordPress guide to create a Google sitemap but a visible sitemap for human visitors. After looking into several options and plugins once again I choose the easy way and decided to use a plugin to make a sitemap page for WordPress.

I do think that using as few WordPress plugins as possible is the best way to keep your WordPress blog or WordPress site operating as smooth as possible and to keep future upgrades hassle free. Building a WordPress site heavily dependent on plugins can lead to future problems with newer versions of WordPress that may not function well with outdated plugins. In this case if the plugin is no longer supported and stops working, you would could just deactivate the plugin and delete the sitemap page.

There is a manual method to make a sitemap page for WordPress that would take some time to research and create. While this would be the preferred method to reduce plugin dependency, (plugin dependency… did I just coin a new WordPress term?) it would also be theme specific and need to be duplicated if you switch themes. Please note that some WordPress themes come with a sitemap template file.

Sitemap Generator Plugin for WordPress is the plugin in this case that seems to be the best solution I can find. This plugin uses a page generated in the WordPress dashboard. The good thing about using a plugin in this case is that it will still work if you switch themes and display the sitemap on the current themes page template. Installing the plugin is the typical method and the above link to the plugins page has very easy to follow instructions for it use and configuration.

Remember this sitemap page option will use the currents themes page template so switching themes requires no additional steps and your sitemap will look just like the current theme in use. See an example of mine here: Sitemap

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Tags: Customize Wordpress, Plugins, WordPress Guide

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Comments

Comment by FunMahoL on March 5, 2009 @ 12:00 am

yaa its very necessary to have visible sitemap,its really help the visitors to stay more on your site.they can just access every content of your website by this method rather than just simply search for what they want.

Comment by Emre on March 5, 2009 @ 6:50 pm

Sitemap is so remarkable for a website. If you do not want to use a plug-in you can use your xml feed address for google webmaster.

Comment by SEO on March 6, 2009 @ 4:32 am

thx man sitemap rulezz

Comment by Tamal Anwar on March 7, 2009 @ 2:07 am

Instead of having an XMl sitemap (for SEO) I created a human sitemap called the “Popular articles” This is the page to find all links of my blog and it’s super human friendly. I didn’t used any plugins, I made it manually, because this way I can customize it. + I also made the page as No Index for search engines, because it contains too many links!

Jeff Replied:
March 7th, 2009 at 10:08 am

Tamal, that may be something the readers here would be interested in reading how you did it. If you would like to do a guest post on it here Contact Me.

Tony Lee Replied:
March 7th, 2009 at 10:38 pm

Hi Tamal,

That sounds very interesting. I saw the example of it on your blog. Perhaps you or someone can write a plugin that will generate the effect.

Thanks for sharing!

Free Xbox 360 Replied:
March 8th, 2009 at 7:08 am

or surely you could just make a HTML one, which you can then display on your site

Comment by tom on March 8, 2009 @ 6:35 am

I rely heavily on sitemap to get my site indexed and keep it all updated.Thank you for sharing the plugin !

Comment by Email Marketing on March 11, 2009 @ 11:24 am

I have always felt a basic index, like a sitemap should almost always be mandatory when it comes to a website. If a person just wants to craigslist it, more power to them.

Comment by Kampanye Damai Pemilu Indonesia 2009 on March 11, 2009 @ 8:03 pm

A nice post. I don’t have a sitemap page and consider to make one after reading this

Comment by Bath Fixtures on March 12, 2009 @ 9:51 am

great post, i think this is a very good solution to making your sitemap w/wordpress. thanks for the info. i don’t mind using plugins so the generator is fine for me.

Comment by Fixed Annuity Rate on March 20, 2009 @ 5:55 am

Some excellent ideas here I don’t have a news blog as such but there are some great tips that I plan to use.

Comment by Vista Support on March 27, 2009 @ 1:06 am

Thanks for this useful information.Site map is very useful for sites navigation and some wordpress templates lack of it.

Comment by Web Design Fargo on April 17, 2009 @ 12:26 pm

Thanks for the tip. I have been using another xml sitemap plugin and have not been happy with it. More specifically, google has not been happy with it, and no good can ever come of that!

Comment by fitness training tips on April 19, 2009 @ 1:12 pm

I agree with you that for wordpress dagon designs sitemap generator is the best when it comes to site maps. If you are interested in making a sitemap for google it is done easy at xml-sitemaps.com

Comment by Donnie @ Chattanooga Search Marketing on July 2, 2009 @ 3:00 am

I use a sitemap plugin called Dagon Design Sitemap Generator. It works great and has custom options. Not only is a sitemap good for the users, but Google loves it too.

Comment by RWH @ Reliable Web Hosting on September 20, 2009 @ 2:38 pm

Hey Jeff,
I do agree with you regarding the usage of fewer plug-ins as possible to enhance the smooth functioning of my blogs. I don’t like to overload my blogs with too many fancy plug-ins, even though the temptation could be strong. This sitemap plug-in actually seems good, and if it works even if the themes is switched over, is certainly a plus point. Also if it is developed by dagon design, then it is reliable. Thanks for the useful guide.

Comment by Library App on June 30, 2010 @ 4:24 am

his is the page to find all links of my blog and it’s super human friendly. I didn’t used any plugins, I made it manually, because this way I can customize it. + I also made the page as No Index for search engines, because it contains too many links!

Comment by Annuity Rates on July 19, 2010 @ 10:56 am

Great article! We use the wordpress platform for many of our pension annuity sites as it allows us to distribute article and content writing amongst staff. As we write so many articles sitemap updates have always been an issue as we need fresh sitemaps when new articles are added. Great stuff.

Comment by dwiut on August 8, 2010 @ 10:22 pm

I had installed Dagon Design Sitemap Generator, I want add page that contain my sitemap, what should I write as link in a new page?

Jeff Replied:
August 10th, 2010 at 7:27 am

Ummm,,, Sitemap?

dwiut Replied:
August 11th, 2010 at 1:12 am

yes, I have seen your sitemap blog and I think you use Dagon plugin. And I want to know what configuration and I want place sitemap as page itself like

Jeff Replied:
August 11th, 2010 at 10:10 am

Dude the post tells you how and there is a link to the plugin for more information.

Comment by Drum Loops on March 23, 2011 @ 8:20 pm

Does it also make sense to include a sitemap even if you have only around 10-15 sites? I understand the importance for seo, but is it really necessary if you have a very simple site structure? Thanks in advance!

Jeff Replied:
March 26th, 2011 at 7:45 am

Not sure of the any big benefits for a small site as you suggested.

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