Site map seems to be working for Google, but is not user friendly at all. No links to follow, etc. I attached a screen shot, please advice how to pretty this up for visitors to the site. Thanks

CommentFileSizeAuthor
www_yourautorights_com_sitemap_xml.jpg405.76 KBmjasonbaker

Comments

samirnassar’s picture

samirnassar commented

XML Sitemap is XML. It is not a sitemap for end-users. If you want a sitemap for end users look for modules like Site Menu.

To clarify further, XML sitemaps are used by search engines based on a common format. See http://sitemaps.org

Jeff Burnz’s picture

Jeff Burnz commented

@samirnassar, for sure, its not for humams, but it should still be generating the links and look a lot better than that, check one of ours out,

http://www.emaxhealth.com/sitemap.xml

Heres a pic if you can't be bothered with the hefty size of that page...
http://i33.tinypic.com/29b1vuq.png

samirnassar’s picture

samirnassar commented
Status: Active » Postponed (maintainer needs more info)

@jmburnz, the XML that XML Sitemap module puts out might not be as formatted as sitemap you cited, but that is beside the point.

The title of the issue indicates the bug filer was looking for something that is not "raw data." I am taking "raw data" to mean XML. Another clue is phrases like "no links to follow." It seems like the bug filer is expecting clickable links as in HTML.

Setting to Need More Info to get submitter feedback.

Jeff Burnz’s picture

Jeff Burnz commented

The sitemap I linked to is generated by this module - its one huge list of hyperlinks. Its very user friendly for site developers and owners to check their sitemap is generating the way they want it to.

Just a hunch, but I'm thinking that perhaps the XSL is not loading properly.

Take a look at the source and see if this is at the top....

<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="/sites/all/modules/xmlsitemap/gss/gss.xsl" ?>
mjasonbaker’s picture

mjasonbaker commented

I used this module in drupal 5.5 and it displayed a sitemap very similar to the one that jmburnz showed for his emaxhealth site. Same module, just different presentation for Drupal 6. While I acknowledge that it seems to work and isn't supposed to human friendly, I see no reason why it shouldn't be human friendly. While few, there are a couple of reasons that I like sitemaps to read easily, especially for smaller websites.

Jeff Burnz’s picture

Jeff Burnz commented

@mjasonbaker - the emax site is Drupal 5 and the sitemap I linked to is generated by this module.

See comment #4 above - check the source and see if the XSL is loading.

mjasonbaker’s picture

mjasonbaker commented

It is close, although it is pointing to "default" as opposed to "modules" here is the clipping from my source.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="http://yourautorights.com/sites/default/files/xmlsitemap/gss.xsl" ?>
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9
http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9/sitemap.xsd">

Jeff Burnz’s picture

Jeff Burnz commented

I see, looks like the D6 version creates a folder in the files directory and writes the sitemap and xsl to it.

Check to see if the gss.xsl file actually exists and if the files folder is writeable (admin/settings/file-system). To be frank I am no expert in this so I am just covering off the basics here. Hopefully someone with more knowledge will come along:)

mjasonbaker’s picture

mjasonbaker commented
Status: Fixed » Postponed (maintainer needs more info)

both gss.xsl and sitemap.xml.gz can be found at /sites/default/files/xmlsitemap and at (admin/settings/file-system) the file system path is: sites/default/files. the temporary directory is /tmp and the download method is set to the default: Public - files are available using HTTP directly.

I am a bit naive in these things. Is there supposed to be a css file for this, or is it formatted in xml?

Jeff Burnz’s picture

Jeff Burnz commented

Yes, there is css and js, but they are linked in via gss.xsl so you wont see any reference to them in the sitemap header.

sites/all/modules/xmlsitemap/gss/gss.css
sites/all/modules/xmlsitemap/gss/gss.js

I just fired up the Drupal 6 version on one of my new sites (test server) and it worked flawlessly, must be something with your particular installation or configuration - have you tried disabling + uninstalling / re-installing etc?

mjasonbaker’s picture

mjasonbaker commented

jmburnz - You are a champ! Thanks for firing up a version on your test site . . . that's going the extra mile.
I simply disabled all the the sub-items of XML Sitemap and then re-enabled them 1 at a time. They all work now.

There was a problem when I ran update.php after activating and then upgrading the XML Sitemap module. I'm not sure what happened, nor did associate it with this till now but I'm sure it was somehow related.

Final issue: Now that it works, I am noticing one last problem. All of my pathauto renamed items are showing like /taxonomy/term/18. They display and work properly in the site, just not the sitemap.

I have deleted old aliases, rebuilt aliases, ran cron, refreshed, un-enabled all components of XML sitemap module and then re-enaled. Am I missing something.

Thanks again

Jeff Burnz’s picture

Jeff Burnz commented

Bugger, the "path alias not showing in sitemap" is perhaps the longest standing issue with the module that I know of.

The classic fix was to delete alias's, disable the module + unintall then re-write the alias's (pathauto) etc. Theres a post about it somewhere on this site - you need to do each step in order.

I see you have already given that a go, perhaps you just need to keep trying with this until you hit the magic formula.

mjasonbaker’s picture

mjasonbaker commented
Status: Postponed (maintainer needs more info) » Fixed

I couldn't find the formula. I ended doing the following.

node: went to each node and unchecked the pathauto box and then rechecked it. Hit save and presto . . . one by one they worked.

user: went to my account, then edit and simply hit save. That worked easily.

taxonomy: went to taxonomy, took each list and selected edit vocabulary, copied relevant info and then hit delete button. Went back to taxonomy page and selected add vocabulary, rebuilt all info and selected "tags" in the settings fieldset. Then I went to a node and in vocabularies fieldset I pasted all my terms. Went back to taxonomy and in settings fieldset, I finally changed "tags" to just "multiple". (not so much fun!)

forum: Copied, deleted forum then rebuilt. of note, do not delete a container until you have copied info for all forums in that container or you will loose all the forums nestled within. Luckily I had a backed-up database.

my original issue is closed, found a tedious work-around for pathauto/taxonomy/XML sitemap, but not sure how to post so that someone can find, identify and fix this bug. I also had my original problem happen again, so this is really two bugs. I unselected the children of the XML sitemap in modules, saved, re-selected, saved and it was working again.

jmburnz - thanks again for the help and moral support.

mjasonbaker’s picture

mjasonbaker commented
Status: Postponed (maintainer needs more info) » Active

Seems like the formatting of the user friendly view keeps breaking. Not sure why, but I suspect that it has do do with a bot or spider accessing my site.

After I uncheck and then recheck sitemap module selections, everything looks fine. Then a few days later something will happen and the info becomes computer jumbo again. It seems to work, its just not user friendly. Does anyone know why this is happening or know how to fix it?

s.daniel’s picture

s.daniel commented

Take a look at following issue - maybe that helps: http://drupal.org/node/320672

mjasonbaker’s picture

mjasonbaker commented

Thank you s.Daniel for identifying the issue!

My sitemap is formatted when the site name is preceded with the "www." in the address bar, but does not look user friendly when the "www." is omitted.

So, for SEO isn't it better to require one method or the other. If it is, then shouldn't I just change the .htacess to have "//sitename" redirect to "//www.sitename"

What are your thoughts/suggestions?

s.daniel’s picture

s.daniel commented
Status: Active » Fixed

So, for SEO isn't it better to require one method or the other. If it is, then shouldn't I just change the .htacess to have "//sitename" redirect to "//www.sitename"

This is exactly what you should do :)
Having sites accessable via www and non-www can lead to problems, usually with search engines that index your content twice.

Marking as fixed, please feel free to reopen if I should be wrong about this.

open-keywords’s picture

open-keywords commented

Actually the XSL isn't loaded by the web browser if it comes from a different domain than the XML (another supposed security risk involved here)

example:
if the XML http://example.com/sitemap.xml refers to XSL at http://www.example.com/some.xsl
the XSL will not be loaded, and the XML is shown as raw data, because www.example.com is a different domain (strictly speaking) from example.com

Jeff Burnz’s picture

Jeff Burnz commented

Actually the XSL isn't loaded by the web browser if it comes from a different domain

Thank-you very much for pointing that, I could see the issue was with the XSL not loading but had no idea why not.

Anonymous’s picture

Anonymous (not verified) commented
Status: Fixed » Closed (fixed)

Automatically closed -- issue fixed for two weeks with no activity.