Hi dudes! And thanks for reading. My site contains static pages and also a forum (phpBB3). The static pages' content doesn't change very often except the news page (the news are also shown on the homepage). But does the forum change the making-a-sitemap process somehow? Because of course the forum gets more and more topics and post and so on... How do I make a correct sitemap for this kind of a site? Should I use one of the programs preferred in the Google sitemaps FAQ sticky thread e.g. Gsitemap or what? And what about a HTML sitemap for the site itself - how should it be built and where should it be placed in the site / HTML code?
i think the sitemap for static sector and main forums pages is enough. phpbb3 is commonly used cheme and it should be easily indexed by search engines, also HTML sitemap may be placed: http://<sitename.domain>/sitemap.html and you may link to it in footer, for example.
So I make a .xml sitemap (for uploading to Google via the webmaster's tools) of the whole static sector and main forum pages like the index, every forum and the subforums. Right? Or what about a sitemap about the whole site for the first time and then leave the rest for the SE (meaning the days and new posts/topics ahead)? Do you mean the link would be visible in the "copyrights section" of the pages at the very bottom? Thanks!
>> what about a sitemap about the whole site for the first time >> - here is the problem, cause some changes to non-primary forum pages may occure, and you may probably delete some pages. If so google will register 404 error. And it will look like YOUR error, cause the page, listed in sitemap don't exist. I've had such problem with one "sports" project (with forum) which get about 200 google mistakes in that way. >> Do you mean the link would be visible in the "copyrights section" of the pages at the very bottom? >> sometimes the link to sitemap is sidewide. but it's up to you. generally saying: The only reason here should be usability... But as i see my analitics, my sidewide "sitemap" link is cliked by each 1000 visitor )), so it's probably useless page ))
On SMF there is a mod that rewrites your sitemap as and when new topics are created. I expect there will be a similar one for your software too if you search for it.
phpBB3 has a sitemap generator so use that sitemap and also use an xml sitemap generator software program to index your site fully and quickly. Then just submit both sitemaps / include both sitemaps in your robots.txt file as well as anywhere else prominently on your site. A footer link would be awesome for quicker indexing OR have the HTML page be your sitemap in the footer for human readers.
If you have a large forum: Use a sitemapper for main site (filter off forum) / sitemap-plugin for the forum. Connect them with a sitemap index file.