BigSitemap

BigSitemap is a Sitemap generator suitable for Rails 2.3.2 applications with more than 50000 URLs. It splits large sitemaps into multiple files, optionally gzipping them to minimize bandwidth usage and using batched queries (find_each) on your models to avoid running out of memory.

BigSitemap is best run periodically through a Rake/Thor task. Your application environment should be loaded prior to generating sitemaps; BigSitemap uses your application database models and routing setup.

sitemap = BigSitemap.new(
  :url_options => { :host => 'example.com' },
  :batch_size => 1001, :gzip => false
)

# add a model with find options
sitemap.add(Community, :conditions => ['members_count > ?', 5])

# named scopes also work
sitemap.add(Posts.published, :change_frequency => 'weekly')

# generate it!
sitemap.generate

The code above will create 3 files at minimum:

1. public/sitemap_index.xml
2. public/sitemap_communities.xml
3. public/sitemap_posts.xml

If any of your sitemaps grow beyond 50000 URLs (this limit can be changed to less with the ":max_per_sitemap" option), the sitemap files will be partitioned into multiple files ("sitemap_communities_1.xml", "sitemap_communities_2.xml", ...).

The URLs for each database record are generated with polymorphic_url helper from Rails. That means that the URL for a record will be exactly what you would expect: generated with respect to the routing setup of your app.

Advanced

BigSitemap options:

• :url_options -- hash with :host, optionally :port and :protocol;
• :base_url -- string alternative to :url_options, e.g. "https://example.com:8080/";
• :document_root -- value of Rails.public_path by default (recommended not to change);
• :max_per_sitemap -- 50000, limit dictated by Google but can be less;
• :batch_size -- 1001;
• :gzip -- true;
• :ping_google -- true;
• :ping_yahoo -- false, needs :yahoo_app_id;
• :ping_msn -- false.

To ping search engines, call ping_search_engines after you generated the sitemap:

sitemap.generate
sitemap.ping_search_engines

You can control "changefreq" and "priority" values for each record individually by passing lambdas instead of fixed values:

sitemap.add( Posts,
  :change_frequency => lambda {|post| ... },
  :priority => lambda {|post| ... }
)

Credits

Thanks to Alex Rabarts who open-sourced big_sitemap on GitHub.

Thanks to Alastair Brunton and Harry Love whose work was a starting point for big_sitemap.

Copyright (c) 2009 Stateless Systems (http://statelesssystems.com). See LICENSE for details.