Search engines find your pages by following links, and they miss things. An XML sitemap is a file that lists every page you want them to know about, so Google and Bing can index your site completely and come back when something changes. PlusCMS builds this file for you at /sitemap.xml and refreshes it automatically as you publish, edit and remove content.
This is not the same thing as the HTML sitemap at /sitemap, which is a page your visitors can read. That one is built from your main menu and is covered in Sitemap. The XML sitemap is only for search engines, and this page explains how to check it, decide what goes in it, and tell the search engines where it is.
This page is for administrators. Every setting below lives under the Configuration menu and needs the administrator role. If you write and publish content, the only part that concerns you is the XML sitemap box on the page edit form, described in step 4.
What can I do in PlusCMS?
Choose which content types appear in the sitemap, and which stay out.
Give each content type a default priority, and override it for an individual page.
Rebuild the sitemap and check how many pages it contains.
Submit the sitemap address to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
Before you start
You need the access to the XML Sitemap settings.
Every PlusCMS site ships with a working default configuration, so for most sites this page is a check rather than a setup. Change a setting only when you have a reason to.
Your sitemap is at https://yoursite.org/sitemap.xml. Open it now, before you change anything, so you know what it looked like beforehand.
How the settings fit together
Everything in the sitemap is decided at two levels: a default for each type of thing, and an optional override on the individual item. The table below is the short version; the steps that follow show where each setting is.
Area | What you can set | Our recommendation |
Front page | Priority and change frequency for your home page. | Leave at 1.0 (highest) and daily. Your home page is the most important page you have. |
Content types | Whether a type (Basic page, News, Event and so on) is Included or Excluded, and its default priority. | Include every type that produces public pages. Exclude types that only exist behind a login, such as portal content, and types that are never shown on their own page. |
Individual pages | An override on the page edit form: include or exclude this one page, and give it its own priority. | Use it sparingly. Raise the priority of a handful of landing pages; exclude thank-you pages and anything only ever reached from a form. |
Taxonomy terms | Whether the pages for your tags and categories are listed. | Leave Excluded. See Taxonomies and menus below for why. |
Menu links | Whether the items in a menu are listed. | Leave Excluded. The pages your menus point at are already in the sitemap through their content type. |
Step 1 — Open the XML sitemap settings
From the admin menu choose Configuration > Search and metadata > XML sitemap.
You land on the List tab. It shows one row: your sitemap's address, when it was last updated, and how many links it currently holds.
Only two tabs? The screen has List and Settings, and gains a third, Rebuild links, only once at least one content type is set to Included. If you cannot see Rebuild links, nothing is in the sitemap yet. Step 3 fixes that.
Step 2 — Check the global settings
Open the Settings tab. The top half is a short list of switches that are almost certainly already right; read them once so you know what they do.
Minimum sitemap lifetime — how long PlusCMS waits before regenerating the file after something changes. 1 day is the recommended value, and the one to set if you find it on No minimum. Search engines do not revisit more often than that anyway.
Include a stylesheet in the sitemaps for humans. — tick this. It turns the raw XML into a readable table when a person opens the address, and search engines ignore it.
Prefetch URL aliases during sitemap generation. — leave it as you find it. The setting's own help note says to switch it off on larger sites because it uses a lot of memory, so this is one for your account manager rather than a quick win.
Enable RobotsTxt support and Skip pages that have 301 redirects set. — leave as you find them.
Leave Advanced settings closed. Everything in there is about the file's storage and base address, and changing it can break the sitemap.
If you changed anything, click Save configuration at the bottom of the page.
Step 3 — Decide which content types are included
Below the switches on the same Settings tab is a block of vertical tabs: Frontpage, Menu link, Content and Taxonomy term.
Frontpage shows the Priority and Change frequency of your home page. Leave them at 1.0 (highest) and daily unless your home page genuinely changes more often than that.
Click Content. You get a table of every content type with its current Inclusion, Priority, and three counts: Available (how many items exist), Indexed (how many the sitemap knows about) and Visible (how many are actually in the file right now).
Click the name of a content type you want to change. For the example we use Basic page.
Clicking the name takes you to that content type's own settings form, the same one you reach from Structure > Content types.
In the vertical tabs at the bottom of the form, click XML sitemap.
Set Inclusion to Included. A second field appears.
Set Default priority. 0.5 (normal) is right for most content; see the guide below before going higher.
Click Save content type.
Repeat for each content type that produces public pages. Then open the Settings tab again and check the Content table shows the right types as Included.
Priority is a hint, not an instruction. It runs from 0.0 to 1.0 and tells search engines which of your own pages matter most relative to each other. It does not affect how you rank against other websites, and Google says it ignores the value altogether; other search engines may still read it. Setting everything to 1.0 tells the search engine nothing at all, so keep most content at 0.5 and raise only the pages that genuinely matter.
Priority | Use it for |
1.0 | The home page and your two or three main landing pages, such as Become a member. |
0.8 | Content you publish to be found: news, blog posts, events, resources. |
0.5 | Everything else: standard pages, contact and FAQ pages, supporting information. |
0.1 | Archived or rarely updated pages you still want indexed. |
Step 4 — Override a single page
Once a content type is included, every page of that type follows its defaults. To treat one page differently:
Edit the page as you normally would.
In the vertical tabs near the bottom of the form, click XML sitemap. The tab's summary already tells you what the page inherits, for example Inclusion: Default (included).
Change Inclusion to Excluded to keep this page out, or leave it on the default and change Priority to promote or demote just this page.
Save the page.
Good candidates for Excluded are thank-you pages, pages only reached from a form or an email, and drafts you publish for review. Unpublished pages never appear in the sitemap, whatever this setting says.
Taxonomies and menus
The Taxonomy term and Menu link vertical tabs let you include the pages for your tags and categories, and the items in your menus. We recommend leaving both Excluded, which is how every PlusCMS site is delivered.
Taxonomy terms. Each term has an automatic page at an address like /taxonomy/term/123. In PlusCMS these are not designed pages, and your visitors never see them. Your listing and landing pages use the terms as filters, and those pages are already in the sitemap through their content type. Listing the bare term pages adds nothing and dilutes the signal you send about the pages that matter.
Menu links. A menu item points at a page, and that page is already listed. Including menus only produces duplicates.
The exception: if your site has been built so that a term page really is a proper, themed landing page with its own content, that vocabulary can be included. Open Structure > Taxonomy, edit the vocabulary, and set Inclusion under its XML sitemap heading. If you are unsure whether that applies to you, ask your account manager rather than guessing.
Step 5 — Rebuild the sitemap and check it
PlusCMS updates the sitemap on its own as content changes, but after changing inclusion settings you should rebuild it once so the file reflects your new choices straight away.
Go back to Configuration > Search and metadata > XML sitemap and open the Rebuild links tab.
You may see a red message saying Your sitemap is up to date and does not need to be rebuilt. Ignore it; that message looks at recent changes, not at your new settings.
Leave Save and restore any custom inclusion and priority links. ticked, so the per-page overrides from step 4 survive the rebuild.
Click Rebuild sitemap. A progress bar runs and you are returned to the List tab with the message The sitemap links were rebuilt.
Look at the Links column. It should now show roughly the number of public pages on your site, not 1.
Click the sitemap address in the URL column to open the file itself.
Because the stylesheet is switched on, the file opens as a table: the number of URLs at the top, then one row per page with its last modification date, change frequency and priority. That table is what a visitor or a colleague sees if they open the address; a search engine reads the XML underneath.
A blank page or an error at /sitemap.xml means search engines are getting nothing. Do not submit the address until the file opens. Try Update cached files then Update on the List tab first; if it still fails, contact your account manager.
Step 6 — Tell the search engines where it is
You only need to do this once for each search engine. After that they re-read the file themselves.
Sign in to Google Search Console and open Sitemaps in its left-hand menu. Under Add a new sitemap, enter sitemap.xml and click Submit.
Sign in to Bing Webmaster Tools, open Sitemaps, and submit the full address, https://yoursite.org/sitemap.xml.
Come back a few days later. Both tools report how many of the listed pages they have indexed and flag any they could not read.
Automatic notifications — PlusCMS can also ping the search engines itself every time the sitemap changes. Manual submission is enough for almost every site, but if you want this switched on, ask your account manager.
Keeping it healthy
You do not need to rebuild after every edit. New and changed pages join the sitemap on the site's own schedule, subject to the minimum lifetime in step 2.
Rebuild once after any change to inclusion settings, and after a large content import.
Only list pages the public can open. A page that needs a login, or that is blocked in robots.txt, wastes the search engine's visit and can count against you.
Check Google Search Console's coverage report every few months. It is the quickest way to spot pages that are in the sitemap but not being indexed.
Checking it worked
That's it. Open https://yoursite.org/sitemap.xml: it should show a table with a URL count that matches the number of public pages you expected, and the Content table on the Settings tab should show a Visible count against each included type. If a page you expected is missing, check it is published and that neither its content type nor the page itself is set to Excluded.
Related articles
Sitemap — the HTML sitemap your visitors see at /sitemap, and how the main menu controls it.
Managing Content — adding, finding and editing the pages the XML sitemap lists.
Building Pages — creating content pages with fields and paragraph components.
Taxonomies — how tags and categories work in PlusCMS, and why their pages stay out of the sitemap.
Managing Menus — the menus behind the HTML sitemap.
Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager — the other half of understanding how people find your site.