What is sitemap ?
Sitemap is nothing but a .xml file containing urls available on your site
It contains URL, last modified date, frequency of content change and priority ( between 0..1 )
Why we need sitemap ?
We can submit sitemap file to search engine. It will help them in analysing what urls on your site are available for crawling.
What is xml pattern ?
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
<url>
<loc>http://www.example.com/</loc>
<lastmod>2005-01-01</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
<priority>0.8</priority>
</url>
...
...
</urlset>
What will be the path for sitemap ?
"www.example.com/sitemap.xml"
Are we going to generate sitemap manually ?
No... there is mephisto sitemap plugin.We can use it.
script/plugin install http://svn.appelsiini.net/svn/rails/plugins/mephisto_sitemap/
Am i needed to generate to sitemap for each request ?
No ...........we can generate it in background task daily basis.
How it will be accessed for request to sitemap ?
we can define path to local file in routes.
map.connect "sitemap.xml", :controller => :sitemap
Class SitemapController
def index
render "some local file path"
end
....
Here are the reference links
http://www.fortytwo.gr/blog/19/Generating-Sitemaps-With-Rails
http://www.bestechvideos.com/2008/07/04/ruby-plus-71-how-to-create-a-seo-sitemap-for-rails-apps
