When you look at the sitemap for this site, you see a list of all the Main Pages, the Posts and Articles, the Categories and the Feeds.
This is not only very useful for the reader, but also useful for search engines.
The beauty, is that it’s all automated. Every time there’s a new post or page or category, the sitemap gets updated automatically.
There are quite a few sitemap generators out there – so why another one?
Well, I was using Headway with WishList member, and realised that my product thank-you/download page was showing up in my search results! But if I excluded the page site-wide to remove it from the search results, it also removed it from the navigation for members. After a little playing around and looking at various options – I figured it would be much simpler to have some control within the sitemap plugin itself, as to what shows and what doesn’t..
So we have the Headway HTML Sitemap Plugin – with some options:
The options are mostly self-explanatory, except maybe the ‘Use Headway excludes’ along with the following list of pages.
Use Headway Excludes means that the sitemap honours the Headway settings for pages – for exampel the ‘Whoops 404′ page is hidden normally. This is the default setting.
However, you can override the settings, by either deselecting that option, or simply by selecting one of the pages in the list under ‘Exclude These Pages’. As soon as you manually select a page to exclude from the sitemap – Headway settings are ignored. One thing to watch with this, is when you may have a product download page you want to exclude from the sitemap, and so you select that page in the list. Because this overrides the Headway settings – the ‘Whoops 404′ page will then appear unless you also select that in the list of pages to exclude..
I find that this plugin gives me some additional flexibility and control of what shows up in my sitemap, and also automates the process of keeping it up to date.
So here’s the download: Headway Theme HTML Sitemap Plugin by HeadwayTips.com
Installation
- Install the plugin
- Create a Page – I call mine ‘Sitemap’
- In HTML mode, type the following code in the page (don’t copy and paste this – as it’s html..)
<!--html-sitemap-->
- Save and test the page!
- Edit the options, which you will find under the wordpress Settings -> HTML Sitemap menu option.
~ to your sitemap success 
Paul.
p.s. unfortunately ‘proper’ support is not available for the free plugin – otherwise I’d never get any paid work done! – but feel free to ask questions in the comments..
Hi, I'm Paul Coughlin, the owner and publisher of this blog.
that’s a great plugin, but one question by installing another plugin we are putting a burden on out blog. It would be great enough if we code it. (links removed)
Awesome post! I just wanted to add, only because I am new to all of this and it wasn’t initially obvious to me. When adding the Sitemap page, in the Edit Page, check the box that says “Hide from navigation”. This way the sitemap page doesn’t appear with your other menu pages. Great Plugin!!!
Thanks for dropping by Conrad, and your compliment. The menu system within wordpress is so good – as a routine now I always create a ‘Primary’ menu – which is automatically used by Headway as the main navigation menu. This means that the control of what pages are shown – is all handled within the menu admin area, not on the pages themselves or within headway. It enables us to add categories, external links, and shuffle submenus – very very easily.. I totally recommend using wordpress menus in Headway. all the best, Paul
Paul, One more question….
When I submitted my sitemap to google, I get an error
Your Sitemap appears to be an HTML page. Please use a supported sitemap format instead.
Obviously your plug-in is for an html sitemap, I guess I don’t understand why google wouldn’t accept it, or what I should do to give google a good sitemap.
@Conrad – It sounds as though you should be submitting an xml sitemap.
HTML site maps are primarily for human visitors – xml is for search engines.
XML plugins – http://bit.ly/hyDa6m
Yet another awesome tool. Thanks Paul. I wanted to add that I usually add a site map like this to my 404 error page to aid in folks finding what they’re looking for. I know to do the XML site map for spiders. It is a shame there isn’t a way to only need the XML and have it read into a page so we wouldn’t need to do both. Or is there?
Hi Sheila – thanks
and of course, simply adding the html sitemap code to your 404 page will show the sitemap there also – great tip! – I sometimes also add the contact form too.
Ref your question – the html sitemap and the xml sitemap both display the same type of information of course, but in very different formats and with different meta information – and for different reasons. So although the information comes from the same place, it is for two different functions, and so we need two different solutions – one to address each function. Reductionism can only go as far as function, and past that point, we compromise the function – the reason for doing it in the first place
all the best,
Paul.
Many thanks, great just what we needed keep us posted cheers! PS Does it work ao in wordpress 3.1 do you know? Thanks again helpful blog.
This is great, thanks a lot!
Paul… great plugin! Love the auto formatting. I do have one question though… My site is being delivered over 3 subdomains (and currently have the plugin on the main domain). Is that any way I can “add” to the code to have the pages from the other subdomains included?
Thanks again for a great plugin… Gary
Hi Gary – thanks for commenting. The plugin uses the built in wordpress functions to access the current wordpress database. Presumably your other sites use other databases? The plugin would need code adding to access the other databases, as well as to run queries on those separate databases – so lots of work there. All this is possible of course, with coding, but is beyond what HeadwayTips provides.
Best regards, Paul.
Paul,
Great plugin Paul. Have you had anyone talk about conflicting plugins etc.? I’ve download and installed twice and keep getting this error:
{{The page you tried to access does not exist on this server. This page may not exist due to the following reasons:
You are the owner of this web site and you have not uploaded (or incorrectly uploaded) your web site. For information on uploading your web site using FTP client software or web design software, click here for FTP Upload Information.
The URL that you have entered in your browser is incorrect. Please re-enter the URL and try again.
The Link that you clicked on incorrectly points to this page. Please contact the owner of this web site to inform them of this situation.}}
Going to deactivate all plugins and see if that helps.
Scott
Hi Scott, I haven’t heard anyone else mention this. Sounds like a redirect issue.. Hopefully you have it sorted one way or the other. cheers, Paul.
Very nice — thanks so much for this. Is there a way to order the pages other than alphabetically (even with a bit of code)?
Very nice — thanks so much for this. Could I ask, is there a way to order the pages other than alphabetically (even adding a bit of code)?
Hi Nan, anything is possible of course, but with the plugin, it’s not something that is an easy change for an end user.. so at least for now – it is what it is
Excellent plugin, thank you so much! Worked flawlessly.