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Cliff
Staff
Jan 17, 2006, 11:09 AM
Post #1 of 1
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Tutorial: Creating a sitemap for Google Sitemaps
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Hey all, this has been discussed lately in the forum so I thought I'd post a tutorial for setting this up.
I guess to start I should go over just what exactly Google Sitemaps is.
According to Google: Google Sitemaps is an experiment in web crawling. Using Sitemaps to inform and direct our crawlers, we hope to expand our coverage of the web and and speed up the discovery and addition of pages to our index. By placing a Sitemap-formatted file on your web server, you enable our crawlers to find out what pages are present and which have recently changed, and to crawl your site accordingly.
Basically, the steps to participating in Google Sitemaps are:
1. Creating a Sitemap in a supported format.
2. Adding that Sitemap to your Google Sitemaps account.
3. Updating your Sitemap when your site changes. So in really basic terms, this is going to make it easier for Google to crawl more of your pages. I can't see anything wrong with that 
If you need more details about Google Sitemaps, there is a full write up here:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/about.html
Now when I first went over this, I was amazed to see that this was just like setting up an RSS feed. So if you have already setup and RSS feed with your Article Manager, then this will just be like adding in a new RSS feed to your exising file.
But this is going to go over the steps from start to finish so I'm going to borrow from that tutorial a little. Here we go!
1. Setup your Sitemap XML template
To publish your Sitemap feed, you need to use a well-formed XML file as the template. Download the xml template that I've attached to the bottom of this post. I've formatted this template for you to use right away so I've kept this simple and just used the required fields, but you can add more options if you want to:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/protocol.html#sitemapXMLFormat
Save and upload the template to your server in the /artman/templates/index/ folder.
2. Setup publishcron.cgi
Download the publishcron_1.1.zip (attached to the bottom of this post) and unzip it on your local computer
Install publishcron in your Article Manager exec folder following the publishcron.txt instructions. Modify the publishcron.ini file to use your new template to publish an rss.xml file. This means you could have something like this in publishcron.ini:
search_url = http://www.yoursite.com/cgi-bin/artman/exec/search.cgi
page1 = /home/yoursite.com/artman/publish/sitemap.xml
query1 = search=1&perpage=9999&template=index/sitemap_template.xml
Include your server path to the publish directory in "page1". You can find that server path in Article Manager under the Server tab in the Setup Options (Publish Dir). In the above example, "query1" will use Article Manager's search to bring in the latest 9999 articles and will use your sitemap_template.xml file. The sitemap.xml file will be published into the publish directory.
Notes:
a. The publish path for page1 may be different depending on where you have put the exec directory and where you want to publish the xml file to.
b. To test that publishcron is working and see how the output looks, enter the URL to publishcron in a web browser and add ?page=1 to the end. This will also publish any queries in the INI file.
http://yoursite.com/cgi-bin/artman/exec/publishcron.cgi?page=1
3. Running publishcron.cgi from the "Publish All" button
To setup publishcron.cgi to execute whenever you save an article or click "Publish All", three interface templates need to be customized. Before modifying any interface templates, be sure to make a backup of the file. - Edit templates/interface/_art_menus.html
- Find the <!-- templatecell : erased -->
add <img src="publishcron.cgi" width="0" height="0"> as the line after <b>Article has been erased</b> - Find the <!-- templatecell : saved -->
add <img src="publishcron.cgi" width="0" height="0"> as the line after <b>Article has been saved</b> - Open templates/interface/_cat_menus.html
- Find the <!-- templatecell : erased -->
add <img src="publishcron.cgi" width="0" height="0"> as the line after <b>Category has been erased</b> - Find the <!-- templatecell : saved -->
add <img src="publishcron.cgi" width="0" height="0"> as the line after <b>Category has been saved</b> - Edit templates/interface/_setup_menus.html
- Find the <!-- templatecell : published_all -->
add <img src="publishcron.cgi" width="0" height="0"> as the line after <b>All files have been published</b> - In Setup Options, make sure you have the following set to “Yes”:
- Display "record erased" page
- Display "record saved" page
4. Validate your Sitemap Feed
You'll then want to login to your Google Sitemaps account (free to start if you don't have one) and add your sitemap:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login
From there Google will walk you through the validation process, and start to access to that sitemap file that you've added.
And that's it! 
Let me know if you need assistance setting up your Sitemap feed. You can post here in the forum, send in an email through our site, or even give me a call.
We also offer a Priority Consulting service if you would prefer for us to setup a Google Sitemap feed on your site. To inquire, send us an email or call 1-800-752-0455.
Helpful links:
Creating a Sitemap
https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/overview.html
Sitemap Protocol Contents
https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/protocol.html
Adding a Sitemap or Site to your Google Sitemaps Account
https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/submit.html
Regards,
Cliff Stefanuk - Customer Service Manager
support@interactivetools.com
(This post was edited by Cliff on Jan 17, 2006, 2:21 PM)
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Attachments:
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publishcron_1.1.zip
(5.14 KB)
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sitemap_template.xml
(1.21 KB)
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