When Written: Feb 2010
Once the correct file extensions are entered it produces perfect XML or HTML Site maps
One way to make sure search engines index your site correctly is to provide a sitemap for them to use to find the pages. A site map in this context is not something that the visitor to your web site can use to locate a page rather than trying to navigate your site via your broken navigation system although it can be used for this. Rather a sitemap for search engines is a specially crafted XML file.
You can create your own sitemap but this is very tedious for anything but the smallest site. I have in the past created a sitemap using a dynamic page which generated an XML site map on the fly for a site with a large number of changing items in a database. But somewhere in between these two extremes we have the majority of web sites. So a tool to help with the creation of a site map would be a welcome addition. Just as I was pondering about this problem for a new web site when an email from CoffeeCup arrived in my inbox about just such a product.
Now CoffeeCup is a company that has been in the business of producing HTML editors for as long as I can remember ( 1996 actually ) , and their products are usually very good and well priced. So with this in mind I downloaded their CoffeeCup Sitemapper (http://www.coffeecup.com/sitemapper ) pointed it at my new ASP .NET web site and off it went and failed to do anything. A quick look at the options showed a list of the file extensions that it would include in its search, this was quite comprehensive but was missing the all important ASP .NET aspx extension so adding the entry “*.aspx;” then re-running the create map option it generated a xml sitemap, which after a quick look to check, I uploaded to the web site and then told Google and Bing about it.
Both search engines were happy about the format and verified it. This tool is not rocket science but it does the job and saves hours so is easily worth the $29 that they ask for it, and yes I did pay for it.
Article by: Mark Newton
Published in: Mark Newton