CultDevOps XML Sitemap Generator - Image, Video, News and Product Feed

A file that lists the addresses of the pages of your site, in the XML format of the sitemaps.org protocol, so that search engines find them more easily. It can also say when a page last changed. Search engines read it when they visit your site or when you submit it.

Only published content without a password. Drafts, scheduled, pending and private content never appear, nor do posts excluded on their edit screen or marked noindex by an SEO plugin, and dates are written in UTC. Which posts, pages, archives, images, videos or products a sitemap lists depends on its type; Sitemap types on the Help & FAQ screen tells what each one contains and leaves out. Every public custom post type with pages of its own, such as WooCommerce products, has a sitemap type of its own.

On a new site, click Create the recommended sitemaps on the home screen of the plugin. It creates dynamic sitemaps of your posts, pages, public custom post types, categories and images, and the sitemap index that lists them; submit that one address to search engines. Add tags, custom taxonomies, videos or Google News on the General screen when your site has that content.

Open the post, page or entry of a custom post type in the editor. In the sidebar, the box XML Sitemaps has the checkbox Exclude from sitemaps: tick it and update the post. It works in the block editor and in the classic editor, for every user who may edit that post, and the sitemaps leave the post out at once. Posts that Yoast SEO, Rank Math, All in One SEO or SEOPress marks noindex are left out by themselves while that plugin is active.

No. A sitemap does not make a page rank higher; it helps search engines find your pages and learn when they changed. Google says that it does not guarantee that the pages are crawled and indexed (overview). It helps most on new sites, on large sites and on pages that few other pages link to. Google also ignores the priority and changefreq values of a sitemap, and uses the last modified date only when it is consistently accurate (build a sitemap).

Open Sitemaps in the admin menu: the column Sitemap URL shows the address of every sitemap and feed. The address of the sitemap index is under Settings, in the box Sitemap index. You can also read it in robots.txt.

Each sitemap and the sitemap index link to a stylesheet (XSL) that your site serves at /?cultxmsi_sitemap=xsl. A browser that applies XSL shows the sitemap as a table with each address, its number of images (and videos, or the title of a news article) and the date of its last change, in the language and direction of your site. Search engines read the XML itself and ignore the stylesheet; nothing is loaded from another server. A browser without XSL shows the plain XML, which is the same sitemap.

Not necessarily. Both can run side by side. The core sitemap at wp-sitemap.xml lists every public post type, taxonomy and the authors by itself, while this plugin lists what you created, so turning it off can remove content from the sitemaps that search engines see. Turn it off with Turn off the WordPress core sitemap (wp-sitemap.xml) only when the sitemaps of this plugin, or those of an SEO plugin, cover everything you want listed.

For ordinary posts and pages, one sitemap is enough: use either the one of the SEO plugin or the one of this plugin, and do not submit both. This plugin adds sitemap types of its own (images, videos, Google News and custom taxonomies) and a product feed for Google Merchant Center. See the entry about SEO plugins under Troubleshooting on the Help & FAQ screen for how to keep one source.

A dynamic sitemap is built when it is first requested and kept for 12 hours. It is renewed at once when you save or delete public content, change a category or tag, change the permalink structure or the site title, change a WooCommerce product or its stock, or create, replace or delete a sitemap. A News sitemap is kept for one hour. A static sitemap changes when you generate it again, and a minute after a post it lists is unpublished, trashed, protected with a password or excluded, so the file stops showing it. The response lets browsers and proxies keep a copy for one hour.

A dynamic sitemap is saved as a record and built from your content when it is requested; it follows your content and long ones are split into pages. A static sitemap is written once as a file to /uploads/cultxmsi/ in the uploads folder, so the web server sends it without WordPress, and it is one file with no pages that changes only when you generate it again or when a post it lists leaves the site. Google documents that a sitemap file affects only the addresses below its own folder, unless you submit it in Search Console (build a sitemap). A static sitemap lives in the uploads folder, so submit it in Search Console, or prefer a dynamic sitemap, which lives at the root of your site.

A sitemap may hold 50,000 URLs and 50 MB uncompressed (sitemaps.org protocol). The field URL Count accepts up to 50.000. A dynamic general sitemap with more than 1.000 URLs is split into pages: its address then shows a sitemap index that lists the pages, and each page is the same address with ?cultxmsi_page=2 and the page number. A News sitemap holds 1,000 URLs at most, and a static sitemap is one file. The plugin stops adding URLs before a document would pass the size limit.

The count in an address is ignored and the size comes from the saved sitemap, up to 50,000 URLs. Long dynamic sitemaps are split into pages of 1,000 URLs. Unknown names and .csv addresses answer 404. Without WooCommerce the product feeds stay empty and a notice shows. Prices are in the store currency without conversion, and the barcode (GTIN) comes only from the product data. Sitemaps list only published content without a password, with dates in UTC. The News sitemap covers the last 48 hours. Images come only from your own domain. Videos are YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion and video files that have a real thumbnail. A sitemap with nothing to list, such as Images on a site without images, answers 404 and stays out of the sitemap index, because the sitemap protocol has no empty sitemap. Addresses of version 1.x are redirected. On a multilingual site, a sitemap without a language chosen lists every language, with hreflang links. New: the sitemap index, the robots.txt line, the switch for the core sitemap and the option to delete all data. Every sitemap type is free, custom taxonomies included. Product feeds are on one screen: the Google Merchant Center feed, which Microsoft Merchant Center reads too, with the option to list only products in stock; the Google Ads and Microsoft Ads feeds became Google feeds. The feeds that no platform imports from an address in their layout were removed, and their addresses answer 410 Gone.

No sitemap you saved is lost. Dynamic sitemaps get their new short address, and an address of 1.x such as ?sitemap=general&filename=posts is redirected to it with a 301. Static files stay where version 1.x wrote them and keep their address. The empty "Test Record" entries that version 1.x saved with every sitemap are removed once. The CSV format and the count in an address are gone; give search engines and marketplaces the new address, which you find under Sitemaps. Saved Google Ads and Microsoft Ads feeds keep their address and become Google feeds of products in stock. A saved feed that version 2.0.0 removed stays in the list with an explanation, and its address answers 410 Gone.

Deactivating keeps everything, but the addresses of dynamic sitemaps answer 404 while the plugin is inactive, because the plugin builds them. Static files stay and keep working. Deleting the plugin removes the cached documents (the folder cultxmsi-cache in the uploads folder) on every site. By default it keeps your saved sitemaps, their static files and your settings, so a reinstall finds them again. If Delete all data when the plugin is deleted was on before you deleted the plugin, they are removed too, on every site of a network, together with the folder cultxmsi in the uploads folder and the choice Exclude from sitemaps of each post.

Yes. You can activate it for the whole network or for single sites; every site of a network activation is prepared, and a site created later is prepared when it is created (on a large network each site prepares itself on its first visit). Saved sitemaps, settings, the robots.txt line and the sitemap index belong to each site, so create the sitemaps on every site. There is no network admin screen.

Yes, both are detected. A Language field appears on the General screen. A sitemap can hold one language, or all of them; posts, pages and archive pages with published translations get hreflang links, and every address comes from the language plugin. Other multilingual plugins are not read.

Only for the product feeds of the Product Feeds screen. The general sitemaps for search engines need nothing but WordPress. Without WooCommerce the product feeds stay empty and the screen says so; the plugin never invents products or prices.

The free feed follows Google's product data specification (Merchant Center Help): add its address in Google Merchant Center as a scheduled fetch. Microsoft Merchant Center accepts the same Google feed file (Microsoft Advertising Help), so one feed serves both, and Google Ads shopping campaigns use the products of Merchant Center. The premium plan adds feeds in the formats that these channels publish: Meta (Facebook, Instagram), TikTok, idealo and PriceRunner. Marketplaces that take products only through their own seller interface or API are not served by a feed address.

After a Google feed is built, the Product Feeds screen counts its products without a GTIN (barcode), a brand, an image or a Google product category, and the published products that have no price, which no feed lists. Show these products opens the WooCommerce product list with just those products, so you can fix them. The report comes from the last build of the feed, so the screen loads without reading your products; Check the products again builds the feed anew. It also says whether the prices include VAT: Merchant Center asks for prices with VAT outside the United States and Canada, and without tax in those two countries (Merchant Center Help: price). The feed follows the country of your store; with WooCommerce taxes off, it writes your prices as you entered them.

No. The sitemaps and feeds are built on your server and served from your site, and the code that builds them makes no request to another server. The addresses inside them point to your own site; the only other addresses are the YouTube, Vimeo and Dailymotion pages and thumbnails of videos that you embedded yourself. Search engines and marketplaces read them from your site. The Freemius SDK is a separate case, described in the entry about Freemius.

Every sitemap type of the plugin is free: posts, pages, custom post types, categories, tags, custom taxonomies, images, videos and Google News, with the sitemap index, the robots.txt line, the browser view and a sitemap per language. So are "Exclude from sitemaps", the noindex of SEO plugins, the Google Merchant Center feed and its quality report. The premium plan is a separate package from Freemius that adds product feeds for Meta (Facebook, Instagram), TikTok, idealo and PriceRunner, each with the field names of the channel's own specification, on the same Product Feeds screen; rules for every feed (categories, tags, a price range) and hourly or daily rebuilds of static feeds; a Google product category for each WooCommerce category, set once; and Google News settings: the post types and categories of the News sitemap, and a publication name per language. A field the store does not have stays empty, and settings that only you know, such as the delivery time or the condition of your products, are asked on the form. The premium plan locks nothing in the free version.

The plugin includes the Freemius SDK, which sells and licenses the premium plan. You do not have to connect an account: every feature of the free version works without it. Freemius may show an opt-in screen on the first visit; Skip sends nothing to Freemius and the plugin works the same. If you choose Allow & Continue, Freemius receives your name and email address, the address, title and language of the site, and the versions of WordPress, PHP, the plugin and the SDK (its screen lists what it collects, and the Freemius privacy policy explains how it is used). The Upgrade page loads the plans and prices from Freemius. The WordPress.org version is updated only by WordPress.org.