XML Sitemap Plus Generator & Splitter Extension for Magento 2Ⓡ ­ User Guide

How to use the XML Sitemap Plus Generator & Splitter Extension for Magento 2?

Go to Add Sitemap

● In Magento Admin Panel left navigation bar, go to Marketing­>XML Sitemap Plus Generator and Splitter ­> 'Manage Sitemap(s)'.

● Click on 'Add Sitemap' on the top right­hand corner of the screen.

Generate New Sitemap (Type: Regular)

● In 'Add Sitemaps', enter the filename of your XML Sitemap, its root location and select a store view before clicking on the 'Save & Generate' button. You can generate XML Sitemaps for a specific store(s), if you're running multiple stores using the same Magento installation by specifying 'pathmap' for symlinked domains. To enable this functionality, please contact support @cueblocks.com .

● The generated XML Sitemap will get listed on the 'Manage Sitemap' screen.

Generate New Sitemap (Type: Regular + Image)

● On “Generate New Sitemap” page, under the setting “Type:”, select “Regular + Image ()” .

● Sitemap generated will include both Regular and Image options.

______

Magento Versions XML Sitemap Plus Generator & Splitter Supports:

Community :: 2.0.0 Enterprise :: 2.0.0

______

Settings in XML Sitemap Plus Generator & Splitter

General Option Settings:

Enable compression : If you have server limitation, generate a compressed version of the "sitemap." file which is the "sitemap.xml.gz" file with the same content but in a smaller version. You can choose to generate an uncompressed XML sitemap if limited bandwidth is not a problem. It is 100% friendly.

Divide by : You can divide XML sitemaps based on 'manufacturer' attribute of the products and have product XML according to several groups of products. If enabled, each group of product will have its own XML sitemap file on the base of its 'manufacturer' attribute value ( for ex.: sitemap_prod_manufacturer_1.xml will contain all products where 'manufacturer' value id is '1')

Product Link Type : In XML Sitemap Plus Generator & Splitter extension, the product URL in the generated sitemap will have the canonical URL.

Use ‘Catalog Root’ filter: This setting allows you to filter products by Category Root at the store view level.

Parse Robots.TXT : Enable/ disable the robots.txt rules using this setting in the XML Sitemap Plus Generator & Splitter.

Check for Orphan Products : This setting enables you to look for products which are not assigned to any category.

Check for Not Fetch Prod (Debug Mode) : This setting allows you to fetch products which were not fetched during sitemap generation because of any of the below reasons:

1) They are disabled. 2) They have visibility set to 'Not visible individually'. 3) They are not assigned to any website. 4) Some extension settings prevent them to be included in the sitemap (for example root category filter, product visibility setting etc).

Please note : This feature is for debug purpose only.

______

Categories Options:

Enable : By enabling this setting you can include category XML file in your sitemap at the store view level.

Frequency : This is an optional setting which indicates the frequency of change of the content at a particular category URL. There are several values defined in the drop­down menu. You can select any value according to your preference.

Use Real Update Date : This value indicates the time when a URL was last modified. This info is important as it helps crawlers to avoid re­crawling the documents that have not changed.

Priority : The "Priority" value indicates the highest priority pages relative to other pages on a website to search engines. We recommend you to assign a range from 0.0 to 1.0, with 1.0 being the most important.

______

Product Options:

Enable : By enabling this setting you can include the product XML file in your sitemap at the store view level.

Frequency : This is an optional setting which indicates the frequency of change of the content at a particular product URL. There are several values defined in the drop­down menu. You can select any value as per your preference.

Use Real Update Date : This value indicates the time when a product URL was last modified. This info is important as it helps crawlers to avoid re­crawling the documents that have not changed.

Visibility : This setting enables you to select which products you want to generate in the XML file. You can choose from "Catalog", "Search" and both "Catalog, Search".

Priority : This is an optional field and helps you set priority of XML files from highest in comparison with other product pages on a website to search engines. We recommend you to assign a range from 0.0 to 1.0, with 1.0 being the most important.

______

Products (Out of stock) Options:

Enable : This setting allows you to enable or disable the “Out of Stock” product URLs in the XML Sitemap that you generate.

Use Real Update Date : This value indicates the time when a product URL was last modified in stock. This info is important as it helps crawlers to avoid re­crawling the files that have not changed.

Frequency : This is an optional setting which indicates the frequency of change of the content on the “Out of Stock” product URLs. There are several values defined in the drop­down menu. You can select any value according to your preference.

Priority : This is an optional field which assists you in setting priority of XML files using this setting.The valid range is from 0.0 to 1.0, with 1.0 being the most important.

______

Products Review Options:

Enable : This setting enables you to either include or exclude the “Magento Review” pages from the XML Sitemap that you generate.

Frequency : This is an optional setting. It shows the frequency of changing the content on the Magento review pages. There are several values defined in the drop­down menu. You can select the value that you require.

Priority : This is an optional field and helps you set priority of the generated XML files starting from the highest to lower values of other Magento review pages. We recommend assigning a range from 0.0 to 1.0, with 1.0 being the most important.

______

Products Image Options:

This setting is used to include/exclude the product images. In the product edit window (Product > Catalog), if an image is marked as “Hidden” then it won’t be included in the image sitemap.

______

CMS Pages Options:

Enable : This setting allows you to include or exclude your website’s “CMS Pages” in the XML Sitemap that you generate.

Use Real Update Date : This value indicates the time when a “CMS Page” URL was last modified. This info is important as it helps crawlers to avoid re­crawling the files that have not changed.

Frequency : This is an optional setting which indicates the frequency of changing the content on the “CMS Pages”. There are several values defined in the drop­down menu like Daily, Weekly, Hourly, Monthly etc.. You can select any value as per your preference.

Excluded Pages : This setting allows you to exclude the CMS Pages you don’t want to include in the XML Sitemap that you generate. Press the “Control” key and select the pages you want to exclude.

Priority : This is an optional field which assists you in setting the priority of XML files using this feature. We recommend assigning a value from 0.0 to 1.0, with 1.0 being the most important. ______

Auto­Generation Settings (Cron Job):

Enabled : If this setting is enabled then your website’s XML Sitemaps will be automatically generated or updated at a time that you specify.

Frequency : This setting allows you to set the frequency of XML Sitemaps to be generated for your online store. You can choose from ‘Daily’, ‘Weekly’ and ‘Monthly’ options.

Generate/Update the Sitemap at this time : With this setting you can set a time at which you want to generate/update the XML Sitemap on daily, weekly or monthly basis.

Enabled Email Report : By enabling this setting, you will receive an email every time an XML Sitemap is generated or updated on your online store.

Email Report Recipient : You can add one or more email address(es) in this field where you want to receive a notification each time the XML Sitemap is generated/updated.

Email Report Sender : This setting enables you to select an email address from which you want your users to receive the email notification regarding generation/updation of XML Sitemaps. ______

Ping Search Engine Settings

Ping Search Engines: This setting allows you to set an automatic ‘ping’ to the search engines to index the generated/updated XML Sitemaps of your store. However, it is recommended to manually submit the sitemaps for indexation as this setting does not guarantee search engine indexing.

Search Engine : This setting allows you to choose search engines you want to ‘ping’ to index your Sitemap. Press ‘Control’ key and select more than 1 search engine from the field. ______

Highlights/Additional Information:

● Real Last Modification Date is a very helpful feature of the XML Sitemap Plus Generator & Splitter extension. It tells the search engines the 'mod date' value from the sitemap, which informs when was the page last updated. It enables the search engines to calculate a page's crawl frequency. The extension automatically includes a 'mod date' value or uses the date when the sitemap was generated as and when it was asked to.

● We send an email with summary of the sitemap generation to the mentioned email address(es), each time a sitemap is automatically updated.

● Generate a separate Mobile Sitemap containing URLs that serve mobile web content in adherence with Google's recommended format.

● Our new plugin allows you to generate and add URLs from the AW Blog extension in XML sitemaps. The plugin only works with XML Sitemap Plus Generator & Splitter and is free to use.

● The intelligent extension notifies users of an entry with the missing URL rewrite after checking all the URLs in the XML sitemap.

● Sitemap generation/updation process consumes high bandwidth which can result in server overload. You must consult your server administrator to decide on the best time (probably the lowest traffic hour) for auto­generation of the XML sitemaps on your store.

● XML Sitemap Plus Generator & Splitter helps you create image sitemaps as per Google's protocol when you generate a regular sitemap. It includes the image info along with the product URLs.

● If you have different Category Root at the Store View level, you can filter product and category URLs at the Store View Level itself with XML Sitemap Plus Generator & Splitter extension.

● If you don't wish to receive email summary when an XML Sitemap is updated, then go to "Extension Configuration" and remove your email address from "Cron Job" settings.

● Under a high performance server, it takes only a few seconds to generate sitemaps for almost 200k products. Rest it depends on the number of products and categories, and the server configuration you are using.

● All search engines cannot follow the Image XML generated by XML Sitemap Plus Generator & Splitter Magento 2 extension. As of now, only Google allows Image URLs in your XML Sitemaps. Others search engines will most likely ignore these Image URLs and crawl the images traditionally.

● The "Ping Function" automatically pings search engines to index the generated/updated XML sitemaps each time. But this doesn't guarantee indexing by search engines. You must submit the indexed sitemaps to search engines account for assured actions.

● XML Sitemap Plus Generator & Splitter extension generates URL rewrites for the sitemaps in a link.

● This extension supports custom catalog rewrites, so it doesn't include links that are ‘301 redirects’ to other pages.

● PathMap is also an interesting feature of this extension. By default, the value of this field will be empty. It’s a ‘Relative Path’ for the sub­roots. Use this setting only for multi­domain sites which use a different root for every domain/store. You can also specify ‘pathmap’ for symlinked domains to generate XML sitemap(s) for specific stores. Please note : This setting is only visible at the website level.

______

SITEMAP SUBMISSION A user has to submit the sitemap path (URL) in the webmasters tool. We can add the Sitemap URL in the Robots.txt file. Please see the example here:

#XML Sitemap

Sitemap: [Mention Your Sitemap URL Path Here]