Support for Drupal 7 is ending on 5 January 2025—it’s time to migrate to Drupal 10! Learn about the many benefits of Drupal 10 and find migration tools in our resource center.The XML Sitemap module seems to be very buggy and only minimally maintained. The Simple XML Sitemap may be a more viable alternative for the foreseeable future.
https://www.drupal.org/project/simple_sitemap
| Comment | File | Size | Author |
|---|---|---|---|
| #8 | Screen Shot 2018-10-18 at 6.50.23 PM.png | 292.91 KB | sean_e_dietrich |
| #6 | seo_checklist-replace-xml-sitemap-w-simple-2883849-6.patch | 1.56 KB | thejimbirch |
Comments
Comment #2
gbyte CreditAttribution: gbyte as a volunteer and at gbyte commentedGood idea, feel free to ping me if you need any support from my side in regards to simple_sitemap.
Comment #3
thejimbirch CreditAttribution: thejimbirch at Kanopi Studios commented+1
Comment #4
Dave ReidFYI XmlSitemap is still active and has a lot of the bugginess fixed in the latest releases.
Comment #5
apadernoThe suggestion could also be to use XML sitemap or Simple Sitemap.
Comment #6
thejimbirch CreditAttribution: thejimbirch at Kanopi Studios commentedI was thinking the same thing as @kiamlaluno, Install An XML Sitemap module.
I don't see how that could be done easily in the code. since the commands are dynamically generated.
Attached is a patch that replaces XML Sitemap with Simple Sitemap.
Comment #7
thejimbirch CreditAttribution: thejimbirch at Kanopi Studios commentedComment #8
sean_e_dietrichPatch applies successfully. Marking RTBC. I also agree that using the Simple Sitemap module is preferred right now as I don't feel the 8.x version of Drupal XMLSitemap is stable enough.
Comment #9
apadernoConsidering that the list makes reference to book pages, should not the suggestion given from the module match what that book page says? It doesn't make sense for the module to suggest a module, with a reference to a book page that suggests the other module.
Did anybody look at Drupal 8 SEO, chapter 5, page 98?
Comment #10
Ben Finklea CreditAttribution: Ben Finklea at Volacci commentedLet’s take a step back and decide which module is best for most sites. In the past the SEO checklist has occasionally suggested that users pick a module (like for analytics). My recent experiences in WordPress have reinforced in my mind that the Drupal way of usually having one supported module is far superior than unlimited choice and incompatibility.
At the end of the day, the SEO checklist is a recommended set of modules and actions, not an overview of all possible choices.
Given Dave’s comment that a lot of the bugs have been resolved, let’s do an analysis of both and pick the best one. Does anyone have experience with recent releases of both modules or have time to test them?
Comment #11
Chris Matthews CreditAttribution: Chris Matthews commented@Ben Finklea +1 to...
The Simple XML sitemap project page states:
After I read through the referenced post, Drupal 8 SEO: Differences between simple_sitemap and xmlsitemap I'm not entirely sure it's accurate/relevant now as the post was written in Feb 2016. The end of the article states the following, but is it really accurate as of today?
I agree that is extremely confusing for site builders to know which xml sitemap module to choose and the phrase "best one" is somewhat relative, but hopefully this will spur some additional conversation.
Comment #12
gbyte CreditAttribution: gbyte as a volunteer and at gbyte commentedYou make it sound like site builders are incapable of choosing one of two modules?
Both modules generate a sitemap.org conform sitemap for monolingual sites. For multilingual sites however, XML sitemap generates multiple sitemap.org conform sitemaps, whereas Simple XML sitemap generates a single multilingual hreflang sitemap conforming to Google's standard for multilingual sites. Both standards are perfectly valid and I don't think there is any SEO advantage yet.
With 3.x of Simple XML sitemap it is also possible to create sitemap variants of different sitemap types within the UI. This allows to have designated sitemaps of specific structure with specific content behind certain URLs. If you are only after sitemap contexts, you can provide those for the XML sitemap module as well by hooking into the code.
NB I'm the author of Simple XML sitemap so I'm not the right person to make a real comparison here.
Comment #13
Ben Finklea CreditAttribution: Ben Finklea commentedWould you give me an example of when this would be used? It sounds interesting but I’m not sure I understand the use cases. Do you mean like a news site map, images site map, etc., or something else?
Comment #14
gbyte CreditAttribution: gbyte as a volunteer and at gbyte commentedThat's correct.
Out of the box Simple XML sitemap creates hreflang conform sitemaps and it is possible to create variants (contexts) by indexing specific content (-types) behind specific URLs. This is doable from within the UI.
On top of that this module attempts to be a framework for other stiemap types. If one wanted to create a Google news sitemap, they would have to implement custom plugins in a module. As soon as these are in place, one can create several Google news sitemaps (these would be sitemap variants of the new type) and make them index specific content.
Version 3.0 is very fresh and I suspect new sitemap types available as contrib modules to follow shortly.
Comment #15
bajah1701 CreditAttribution: bajah1701 as a volunteer commented@gbyte.co
Given that simple XML sitemap doesn't automatically submitted to Ask, Google, Bing (formerly Windows Live Search), and Yahoo! search engines, how do I ensure that the content the search engine receive is up to date?
Comment #16
gbyte CreditAttribution: gbyte as a volunteer and at gbyte commented@bajah1701
You don't need to submit the sitemap every time you make changes to it. This would defeat the purpose of a sitemap. Bots crawl the sitemap a few times an hour. If you keep the sitemap in the default location
/sitemap.xml, you shouldn't have to ever submit it to the search engines. Doing so when first setting up the sitemap does not hurt though and ensures a quick initial indexation.Comment #17
thejimbirch CreditAttribution: thejimbirch at Kanopi Studios commented@gbyte.co
You are correct, you don't need to, but Google does support notifying them of changes.
See
Notify us of changes:https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/submit-URLs
This may trigger a faster re-crawl than not notifying them of changes:
See:
Use the "ping" functionality to ask us to crawl your sitemaphttps://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/183668?hl=en
Comment #18
gbyte CreditAttribution: gbyte as a volunteer and at gbyte commentedI know you can submit changes, just never had the issue of bots visiting a site infrequently; the usual is the opposite. I wouldn't mind the feature, please feel free to open up a request in the module's queue.
Comment #19
bajah1701 CreditAttribution: bajah1701 as a volunteer commented@gbyte.co
Thank you for taking the time to respond. Now I have a confident response when I'm asked that question, cause I know its coming.
Comment #20
thejimbirch CreditAttribution: thejimbirch at Kanopi Studios commentedComment #21
DamienMcKennaBoth XMLSitemap and Simple Sitemap are supported and have stable releases, so maybe both should be supported? Let's make this a feature request to support Simple Sitemap.
Comment #22
Ben Finklea CreditAttribution: Ben Finklea commentedPhilosophically, the SEO Checklist is the opinion of Volacci. It's not designed, necessarily, to be a list of all things SEO for Drupal but rather a recommendation for how we would optimize a site. I propose that we add a link in the description of the XML Sitemap to the Simple Sitemap as an alternative and let people make their own decision. Does that sound good to everyone?
Comment #24
TravisCarden CreditAttribution: TravisCarden as a volunteer commentedDone. :)