WP Sitemap

The beauty of WordPress is that there are so many plug-ins for so many different things. One of the more important things when creating a wordpress site is the sitemap.

A Sitemap functions not only to provide a clear listing of all postings (and/or pages) on a site, but also it helps search engines determine many other things about your web site.

The plug-in we chose for this specific purpose is “WP Sitemap“. Although there are many great sitemap plug-ins out there, this is the one we will discuss in this post.

As described in it’s plug-in page, WP Sitemap is used by placing a short code into a post or a page (page recommended) and your HTML sitemap will appear as a list, complete with page numbers.

Installation:
The fastest way to do it is by FTP. If you are a web designer or developer, you should know FTP by heart. If not, then FTP is something you can learn fast and would be of great help in the future. In this post we shall discuss installation through FTP.
1) Download the plugin from this page.
2) Unzip it locally then Upload the folder ‘wp-sitemap’ to the ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ directory
3) Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
4) Add the shortcode [wp_sitemap] to a post or a page (page recommended)
5) Look at the post / page. Done!

Customization of output
You can customize output by using the different parameters described below:

exclude

(string) Define a comma-separated list of Page IDs to be excluded from the list (example: ‘exclude=3,7,31′). There is no default value.

include

(string) Only include certain Pages or Posts in the sitemap. Like exclude, this parameter takes a comma-separated list of Page IDs. There is no default value.

posts

(string) Include Posts. Valid values:
- true – Posts are included. (Default)
- false – Posts are not included.

pages

(string) Include Pages. Valid values:
- true – Pages are included. (Default)
- false – Pages are not included.

sort_column

(string) Sorts the list of Posts and Pages in a number of different ways. The default setting is sort newest first by Post / Page date.
- ‘post_date’ – Published Post / Page date. (Default)
- ‘post_title’ – The Post or Page title.
- ‘post_modified’ – The updated Post or Page date.
- ‘comment_count’ – The number of comments on a Post or Page.

sort_order

(string) Change the sort order of the list of Pages (either ascending or descending). The default is ascending. Valid values:
- ‘ASC’ – Sort from lowest to highest.
- ‘DESC’ – Sort from highest to lowest. (Default)

paging_position

(string) The position of the page numbers. Valid values:
- ‘top’ – Add page numbers above the sitemap list
- ‘bottom’ – Add the page numbers below the sitemap list (Default)
- ‘both’ – Add page numbers above and below the sitemap list

post_count