Sitemapster

WordPress Core provides a basic sitemap at /wp-sitemap.xml. Sitemapster is useful when you want separate content and image sitemaps, independent enable controls, cached XML, a readable browser presentation, and explicit compatibility with read-only hosting. Avoid publishing duplicate sitemap sets. Enable only the sitemap solution you intend search engines to use.

No. Sitemapster generates XML on demand and stores cached responses in an external object cache or WordPress transients. This supports read-only hosting environments.

A sitemap helps search engines discover eligible URLs and media, but it does not guarantee indexing or higher rankings. Search engines still evaluate content quality, accessibility, relevance, internal linking, and other signals.

Yes. The sitemap index, content sitemap, and image sitemap have separate controls in the Sitemapster admin screen. The index lists only enabled child sitemap types.

Yes. Sitemapster uses its own /sitemapster_index.xml endpoint to avoid conflicts with sitemap routes owned by SEO plugins. However, avoid publishing duplicate content sitemaps: disable the corresponding Sitemapster sitemap if your SEO plugin already provides it. Sitemapster also respects common noindex metadata from Yoast SEO and Rank Math.

Sitemapster automatically invalidates its cache when relevant content is published, updated, deleted, or when settings change. You can also select "Clear sitemap cache" from the Sitemapster admin screen.

The image sitemap includes each content entry's featured image and images attached to that entry in the Media Library. Images found only inside post content are not detected automatically. Developers can add other image sources with the sitemapster_post_images filter.

Pro adds post type and taxonomy controls, per-content exclusions, custom URL, video, and news sitemaps, WooCommerce image support, sitemap diagnostics, cache warming, and WP-CLI maintenance commands. Optional Pro sitemaps remain disabled until you enable them.

First visit Settings > Permalinks and save the page to refresh WordPress rewrite rules. If the web server handles .xml requests as static files, route sitemap requests to WordPress with the appropriate configuration below. For nginx, add this location inside the site's server block: location ~ ^/(?:sitemapster_index.xml|wp-sitemap..xml|sitemap(?:index|-[a-z0-9-]+)?.xml(?:.gz)?|[a-z0-9_-]+-sitemap(?:[0-9]+)?.xml(?:.gz)?)$ { add_header Cache-Control "no-cache, must-revalidate, max-age=0" always; add_header X-Content-Type-Options "nosniff" always; try_files $uri /index.php?$args; } For Apache, add this rule to the site-root .htaccess file before the standard # BEGIN WordPress block: RewriteEngine On RewriteRule ^(?:sitemapster_index.xml|wp-sitemap.*.xml|sitemap(?:index|-[a-z0-9-]+)?.xml(?:.gz)?|[a-z0-9_-]+-sitemap(?:[0-9]+)?.xml(?:.gz)?)$ index.php [L,QSA,NC] LiteSpeed and OpenLiteSpeed support the same .htaccess rewrite syntax. Add these rules before the standard WordPress rules; the first rule also prevents LSCache from serving stale sitemap XML: RewriteEngine On RewriteRule ^(?:sitemapster_index.xml|wp-sitemap..xml|sitemap(?:index|-[a-z0-9-]+)?.xml(?:.gz)?|[a-z0-9_-]+-sitemap(?:[0-9]+)?.xml(?:.gz)?)$ - [E=Cache-Control:no-cache,NC] RewriteRule ^(?:sitemapster_index.xml|wp-sitemap..xml|sitemap(?:index|-[a-z0-9-]+)?.xml(?:.gz)?|[a-z0-9_-]+-sitemap(?:[0-9]+)?.xml(?:.gz)?)$ index.php [L,QSA,NC] After changing nginx or LiteSpeed virtual-host configuration, reload the server. Changes made only in .htaccess do not normally require a reload.

Sitemap generation remains entirely local. Sitemapster uses the Freemius SDK for optional usage opt-in, licensing, purchases, updates, and account management. Free users can skip data sharing, and the plugin's sitemap functionality continues to work. Premium license activation necessarily communicates with Freemius.