XMAP confusion around xml file directory

[tokenring]

Hi everyone!

Great component and very configurable. I have about 8 sites which could be broken into 2 groups. Thered are 4 Joomla 1.5 sites and 4 joomla 1.7 sites. Out of the eight only 1 passes the sitemap test because I manually put a sitemap .xml file in the root directory. Most if not all SEO testing sites and software look for the file to be there. I see all the sitemaps in my Google WMT so I'm confused a bit.

[guilleva]

Hi, I'm not sure what sitemap test are you talking about, but google and others spiders can access your sitemap if you specify them where to find it (Using Google WMT for example). You can also add a line to your robots.txt file for that too, for example:

SITEMAP: http://www.example.com/index.php?option=com_xmap&view=xml&id=1

[tokenring]

wow! that was quick and thanks for the answer. Yeah, I run the tests online and most of the sites says

www.domain.com/sitemap.xml not found: no xml sitemap.

So, I was wondering why are they so keen on looking in the root directory when you can obviously add it differently. In WMT I can see all 8 sitemaps.

this may sound stupid but is it fair to say that it is also expected to be in the root directory? if so, would that be an option for this component. To play a copy in the root option.

Aaron

[guilleva]

Hi, I have just created a small how-to for "generating" sitemap.xml for Xmap. I think you may be insterested on that.
http://joomla.vargas.co.cr/en/documentation/34-xmap-2/how-to/108-xmap-sitemap-as-sitemapxml

About your question for the sitemap location, there is an answer for that very well explained here:
http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html#location

Regards,

Guillermo

[tokenring]

That is a great article.

Aaron

[tokenring]

Interesting. I can't get this to work for my 1.5 sites. I've tweaked both files with all combinations that I can think of, but unsuccessful. 1.7 sites, no problem.

[guilleva]

What error do you get?

Remember that the the URLs for Xmap 1.X are a little bit different than the ones for Xmap 2.X..

[tokenring]

SEO tests are saying

no sitemap.xml present.

I have the file there in the root directory
I have added the entry into robots.txt

When I have a chance today, I'll paste in the contents of my sitemap.xml file and the contents of robots.txt.

I appreciate the help on this. Great modules

Aaron

[tokenring]

Here is the contents of my 1.5 joomla site (robots and sitemap.xml) files in the root directory

User-agent: *
Disallow: /administrator/
Disallow: /cache/
Disallow: /components/
Disallow: /images/
Disallow: /includes/
Disallow: /installation/
Disallow: /language/
Disallow: /libraries/
Disallow: /media/
Disallow: /modules/
Disallow: /plugins/
Disallow: /templates/
Disallow: /tmp/
Disallow: /xmlrpc/
SITEMAP: http://www.allwildlife.ca/index.php?option=com_xmap&sitemap=1&view=xml


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<sitemapindex xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
<sitemap>
<loc>http://www.allwildlife.ca/index.php?option=com_xmap&amp;view=xml&amp;id=1&amp;lang=en</loc>

</sitemap>
</sitemapindex>


and 2 SEO sites are saying no sitemap.xml file present.

thanks for your help on this.


Aaron

[guilleva]

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<sitemapindex xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
<sitemap>
<loc>http://www.allwildlife.ca/index.php?option=com_xmap&amp;view=xml&amp;id=1&amp;lang=en</loc>

</sitemap>
</sitemapindex>

This part should go in a separate file called sitemap.xml

Please, also note that the url on that XML doesn't match with the one on the robots.txt. You should change it to


http://www.allwildlife.ca/index.php?option=com_xmap&amp;view=xml&amp;sitemap=1