I installed and configured Google SEO (1.8.1), and everything looks good. I created a blank sitemap-index.xml file and uploaded it to my root directory (my forum is in the root), and it appears Google SEO populated the file with some initial info:
https://baytowntalkforum.com/sitemap-index.xml
How do I get it to generate the entire sitemap? Is it supposed to do it automatically at some point? I'm familiar with sitemaps, but this is my first time using the Google SEO plugin, so I don't know if there's something I'm supposed to do that I'm not doing or what.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
D
(2017-03-12, 11:48 PM)dastaten Wrote: [ -> ]I created a blank sitemap-index.xml file and uploaded it to my root directory (my forum is in the root)
Get rid of that. Nowhere does it say to do anything like that so why did you?
(2017-03-12, 11:48 PM)dastaten Wrote: [ -> ]https://baytowntalkforum.com/sitemap-index.xml
Seems to work as intended. It's a Sitemap Index so you might want to follow up.
(2017-03-12, 11:48 PM)dastaten Wrote: [ -> ]How do I get it to generate the entire sitemap? Is it supposed to do it automatically at some point?
It already does.
The Google SEO sitemap is fully dynamic, generated whenever it is accessed so it's always up to date.
It's only served via HTTP, there is no file in the filesystem / on the FTP same way there are no individual files for each thread (or even each page of each thread). It's queried from the database and re-generated every time.
(2017-03-13, 12:08 PM)frostschutz Wrote: [ -> ] (2017-03-12, 11:48 PM)dastaten Wrote: [ -> ]I created a blank sitemap-index.xml file and uploaded it to my root directory (my forum is in the root)
Get rid of that. Nowhere does it say to do anything like that so why did you?
(2017-03-12, 11:48 PM)dastaten Wrote: [ -> ]https://baytowntalkforum.com/sitemap-index.xml
Seems to work as intended. It's a Sitemap Index so you might want to follow up.
(2017-03-12, 11:48 PM)dastaten Wrote: [ -> ]How do I get it to generate the entire sitemap? Is it supposed to do it automatically at some point?
It already does.
The Google SEO sitemap is fully dynamic, generated whenever it is accessed so it's always up to date.
It's only served via HTTP, there is no file in the filesystem / on the FTP same way there are no individual files for each thread (or even each page of each thread). It's queried from the database and re-generated every time.
I created the sitemap-index.xml because I didn't see one in the directory. Sorry, I just didn't fully understand how this plugin worked.
I guess it's the sitemap 'index' that's confusing me. I'm used to just a 'sitemap' with many entries, not an 'index' with just four entries. So is this all I need? And I need my robots.txt to point to it, right?
I appreciate your patience. This is new territory for me.
D
Ah, never mind. I just figured out how it works. It's absolutely awesome. Thanks for the amazing plugin!
It's split up because that's what the standard requires
https://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html Wrote:each Sitemap file that you provide must have no more than 50,000 URLs
50'000 URLs sounds like a lot but there are forums with more users/threads than that (this here community has 150k threads) and the sitemap has one entry for each thread and each of the threads' pages. So even smaller forums might reach the 50'000 URL threshold at some point.
So instead of one whopping big sitemap (which is not allowed) Google SEO produces a sitemap index which contains any number of sitemaps e.g. in groups of 1000 threads each (that's 1000 URLs plus however many pages those threads have, which works fine as long as the average is not higher than 50 pages per thread)
If you follow up on those entries you'll see the real ones... i.e.
https://baytowntalkforum.com/sitemap-threads.xml?page=1
And yes you just point the search engines to the index and add the index to robots.txt