WordPress MU

I placed this here instead of the alpha/beta forum because I am using the multi-user aspect of 3.0 beta and there will probably be more likely chance of getting an answer here.

I tried the Google XML Sitemaps plugin, Version 3.2.3 and it has a problem with multi sites. It works fine for the first site. But when you add a 2nd site it adds the 2nd site map to the first site's site map and notifies Google. Since the 2nd site site map doesn't match the first domain, Google gives an error (and rightly so).

I searched this forum for "sitemaps" saw other requests for this issue answered by "why do you want an XML site map?". I will go ahead and answer that because I have experience with XML sitemaps with a popular Vbulletin forum I own. They work to get your pages indexed faster and updated more frequently which is very important when you have a lot of pages and also pages that change frequently. It is especially important if you are using Google custom search, which I do.

So does anyone have any solutions to automatically generating XML sitemaps for Google, yahoo and others to use that will work with MU? (also 3.0beta).

I will go ahead and contact the maker of the Google XML Sitemap plugin and see if they have any solutions, meanwhile I was hoping there might be other solutions, plugin or otherwise.

Might be helpful if you mentioned which specific Sitemap plugin you're using and what the specific error Google is returning. Providing specifics would be a big plus for us to help you.

If you;re using Arne's Sitemap plugin, I believe you have to make modifications to both the plugin as well as the htaccess file for it to work on sub blogs. There should be a rather lengthy thread on that topic.

edit: I believe this was the thread. You'll have to forgive me. I have screaming kids in my ear today and my thought process is rather strained.

http://mu.wordpress.org/forums/topic/1116

reedit: And my experience with sitemaps is that they're a waste of time. But this isn;t the place for such an argument.

I will go ahead and answer that because I have experience with XML sitemaps with a popular Vbulletin forum I own. They work to get your pages indexed faster and updated more frequently which is very important when you have a lot of pages and also pages that change frequently. It is especially important if you are using Google custom search, which I do.

I don't use sitemaps and have posts showing up in Google in 20 minutes. Google loves WP & MU, sitemaps or not.

To tdjcbe

Thank you for your reply.

As stated in my original post I am using Google XML Sitemaps Version 3.2.3. That is the specific sitemap plugin.

The specific Google error is that the sitemap contains the wrong domain name because the plugin combines the sitemaps from all the sites (under the MU installation) into one site map.

I will investigate the link you provided.

However I can see that this is something I will probably have to work out myself given the bias against sitemaps here. I have over 280,000 url's indexed in Google from my forum and believe me if I didn't feed it a sitemap every night it would miss some of them. I tried it with and without sitemaps and sitemaps is better. I depend solely on Google custom search for my forum search. #1 if greatly lightens the load on the dedicated server it runs on and #2 it is a money maker combined with Adsense.

There is a reason Google invented sitemaps and the other search engines followed suite and adopted them also. You don't have to use them and most pages will still make it in the SE's. That's good enough for most people but I want to make sure the SE's know about all of my pages at the time they are created and all of the changes at the time they are made.

As stated in my original post I am using Google XML Sitemaps Version 3.2.3. That is the specific sitemap plugin.

Please link to it. There's a dozen Google XML Sitemap plugins for wordpress.

The specific Google error is that the sitemap contains the wrong domain name because the plugin combines the sitemaps from all the sites (under the MU installation) into one site map.

No, that's a paraphrase. Please copy and paste the specific error you;re receiving.

Please remember when asking for help on support forums, specifics and details are a plus. Paraphrasing doesn;t help much.

However I can see that this is something I will probably have to work out myself given the bias against sitemaps here.

If there was a bias against them, you wouldn;t have received a response nor would I have taken the time to find that thread link.

I don;t like sitemaps. I've been online since the 80's and came up through mainframes. There's a lot of experience behind what I said. And I still took the time to answer you and provide information.

Instead of trying to pick a fight, why not answer the questions you were asked?

to tdjcbe

Again, the EXACT name of the plug in is: Google XML Sitemaps as stated in my very first post.

If you search for THAT plugin at Wordpress.org >Extend >Plugins under the link that is the EXACT name of it. And the EXACT version of it is 3.2.3 as I previously stated.

As far as the error, there is not an error message, but a behavior of the plugin as I stated in my posts.

So don't accuse me of trying to pick a fight. I gave you that info twice and you state it isn't right when it is EXACTLY right.

So forget I even asked. Mods please close or delete this thread I won't be coming back here due to the "know it all" attitude of some users.