SiteMap Reference Guide

Installation

To install the SiteMap Plus plugin:

  • Download SiteMap Plus from our website.
  • Double click the SiteMap.rapidweaverplugin file.
  • If RapidWeaver is running, restart.

SiteMap is now installed ready to use.

 

Getting Started

To get started, add a SiteMap Plus page to your RapidWeaver document by choosing Add Page in RapidWeaver and selecting SiteMap Plus.

 

Site Map Tab

Header Text

The large area just below the three top tabs is the header text area. The content that you add here shows at the top of the webpage content, above the site map but below the site header.

You can add a title, give the viewer information related to the site map, and add images or links to other important or related information, and more. You can add anything here that you can add to a styled text area in RapidWeaver.
You do not have to add anything. You can leave it blank.

Display Options

In the lower left of the window, you can choose how the site map is displayed.

  • Tree View — This is the default. Generates a list of pages in your site in the order the site is set up from top to bottom. Each item links to the noted page.
  • Alphabetical — Generates a list of pages in your site divided into sections for each letter of the alphabet. Each item links to the noted page. The list is sorted A-Z by default. See the section below on the Alphabet tab for information on customizing this option.
  • By Category — Generates a list of pages in your site divided into sections based on the categories you have specified. Each item links to the noted page. This allows viewers to find information related to an area of interest. See the section below on the Categories tab for information on creating categories.


Site Organization Tab

You can use this tab to customize various settings for the pages of your site. RapidWeaver automatically organizes the pages of your website into folders. The names of the folders and html pages are auto-generated and are not very descriptive. The Site Organization tab gives you access to that information, and more, all in one place, so you can change the auto-generated names to something more meaningful and useful.

  • Title — title of the page. You can see the auto-generated title in the list of pages in the left column of the RapidWeaver window. This is the text that is used for navigation on your site (e.g., your navigation menu).
  • Folder Name — name of the folder used by RapidWeaver that contains each page of your site. The name of this folder is part of the URL and might be used by search engines. Giving this folder a more descriptive name can also help with organization.
  • File Name — the name of the html file. The name of this file is part of the URL and might be used by search engines. Giving this a more descriptive name can also help with organization.
  • Description — this text is inserted in the meta data for the page.
  • Category — a list of categories used when you display the site map “By Category”. A category meta tag is also added to the Header of that webpage.
  • Hide in SiteMap — identifies pages that you do not want shown in the site map.
  • Browser Title — title of the browser window used for the page.
  • Keywords — meta tag keywords are sometimes used by search engines while indexing your site.
  • Show Subpages — some page types, such as RapidBlog, Blog, and FAQMaker, dynamically generate subpages. Checking this box will show those subpages in the Site Organization tab so you can customize the settings.
    Once you show the pages in the list, the default setting is to hide them from the site map. It is recommended that you keep the “Hide in SiteMap” setting checked for these subpages.

Show pages with defaults that need changing — If you check this box, the list of pages in the Site Organization tab will only show pages whose Title has not been customized.

Don't allow publish if page defaults are still present — If you check this box, your site will not publish (or preview) if there are any pages whose Title has not been customized.

 

Search Engines Tab

Priority — Each sliders sets the priority of the page relative to others in your site. This does not set priority against other sites or pages on the internet, just relative to other pages in your own site. It is important to be balanced in your settings (i.e., make some low and some high) otherwise it won't have much affect.

To set a higher priority, move the slider more to the right. To set a lower priority, move the slider to the left.

Disable Search — when this box is checked, SiteMap Plus removes the specified page from sitemap.xml and it puts a 'ROBOTS=NONE' in the metadata to prevent search engines from crawling that page.

Change Frequency — allows you to tell search engines how often the page changes. In theory, if you give search engines honest hints, they do a better job. It is important to be honest here. If a page is only updated once a year and you say it's updated monthly or even weekly, a search engine like Google may penalize you.

 

Page Inspector

Options Tab

Style

These preferences apply to the html site map that users can see as a page of your web site.

Page Title — designate the name of the page as listed in the html site map page of your site. You can set it to use the Title or the Browser Title.

Columns — set how many columns your html site map page is separated into, 1–6.

Theme — set the visual style of the html site map page.

 

Options

Include descriptions in HTML site map — includes the contents of the Description after each Page Title in the html site map page.

Use absolute references — generates fully qualified links (e.g. http://yoursite/ page1/page.html) rather than relative links (e.g. ../page1/page1.html) for the html site map page.

Insert site map in footer of all pages — includes the sitemap at the bottom of every page of your site.

Automatically place robots.txt file — automatically creates a robots.txt file and includes it in the root of your website. This file tells the search engines where to find your sitemap.xml file.

Ping search engines after publishing — notifies Google, Yahoo, and Bing that your site has been changed and should be re-indexed. In order to fully enable this function, you must enter the full address of the sitemap.xml file into the field in the next section (xml File; see below).

 

xml File

The sitemap.xml file is a file that search engines use to better index your site. It gives you the chance to specify relative importance of pages in your site as well as give hints to search engines on how often they change, etc. There is no guarantee that the search engine will actually listen to your hints but in general it seems to help provide more accurate searches.
For more information about sitemaps, go to http://www.sitemaps.org

Create a sitemap.xml file — creates and publishes a sitemap.xml file to the root of your website

 

Advanced

Sitemap pages share settings — if you have more than one site map in a website, selecting this checkbox will ensure the different site map pages have the same settings.

 

OPML Tab

OPML is an XML format that is used to store data in an outline format. Saving to an OPML format creates a file you can use to document the website.

 

 

Have more questions? Submit a request

0 Comments

Article is closed for comments.
Powered by Zendesk