Create valid sitemaps using your own functions

Quick Start

meteor add gadicohen:sitemaps

1. Create server/sitemaps.js which contains something like:

sitemaps.add('/sitemap.xml', function() {
  // required: page
  // optional: lastmod, changefreq, priority, xhtmlLinks, images, videos
  return [
    { page: '/x', lastmod: new Date() },
    { page: '/y', lastmod: new Date(), changefreq: 'monthly' },
    { page: '/z', lastmod: new Date().getTime(), changefreq: 'monthly', priority: 0.8 },
    // https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/178636?hl=en
    { page: '/pageWithViedeoAndImages',
      images: [
        { loc: '/myImg.jpg', },        // Only loc is required
        { loc: '/myOtherImg.jpg',      // Below properties are optional
          caption: "..", geo_location: "..", title: "..", license: ".."}
      ],
      videos: [
        { loc: '/myVideo.jpg', },      // Only loc is required
        { loc: '/myOtherVideo.jpg',    // Below properties are optional
          thumbnail_loc: "..", title: "..", description: ".." etc }
      ]
    },
    // https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2620865?hl=en
    { page: 'lang/english', xhtmlLinks: [
      { rel: 'alternate', hreflang: 'de', href: '/lang/deutsch' },
      { rel: 'alternate', hreflang: 'de-ch', href: '/lang/schweiz-deutsch' },
      { rel: 'alternate', hreflang: 'en', href: '/lang/english' }
    ]}
  ];
});

You can call sitemaps.add() as many times as you like. More details on the format below. Note that the url is automatically added to the data served from /robots.txt (since 0.0.4, using the robots.txt smart package).

Important: The above example uses a brand new Date() for every link. This is just for demonstration purposes. Of course you should use the real date of the last page update (updatedAt from the database?). If you always use the current time, Google will penalize you (or at the very least, ignore this field on future crawls).

Full Usage

sitemaps.add(url, list);

URL

The obvious example is /sitemap.xml. You can call the function more than once to have many different (types of) sitemaps. The URL is added to the output of /robots.txt automatically (since 0.0.4).

Note that the location is important. A sitemap can only reference other URLs in its own path or descendant paths. e.g. /sitemap.xml can reference all URLs on the site. /articles/sitemap.xml can only reference other pages in the /articles/ directory/path/route.

List (Array or Function)

The list can either be an array in the following format, or a function that returns an array in the following format (e.g. a function that iterates over information in a Collection).

[
  {
    // Required.  http[s]://sitename.com automatically prepended */
    page: '/pageName',
    // Optional.  Timestamp of when the page was last modified.
    lastmod: new Date(),         // or new Date().getTime()
    // Optional.  always, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, never
    // http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html#changefreqdef
    changefreq: 'monthly',
    // Optional.  http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html#prioritydef
    priority: 0.8
    // Optional.  https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2620865
    // Again, the base URL is automatically prepended to the href key
    xHtmlLinks: [
      { ref: 'alternate', 'hreflang': 'en', 'href': 'en/blah' },
      { ref: 'alternate', 'hreflang': 'de', 'href': 'de/blah' }
    ],
    // Optional.  https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2620865?hl=en
    // Again, the base URL is automatically prepended to the loc key
    images: [
      { loc: '/myImg.jpg' },      // Only loc is required
      { loc: '/myOtherImg.jpg',   // Below properties are optional
        caption: "..", geo_location: "..", title: "..", license: ".."}
    ],
    // Optional.  https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/80472?hl=en
    // Again, the base URL is automatically prepended to loc, *_loc
    videos: [
      { loc: '/myVideo.jpg' },    // Only loc is required
      { loc: '/myOtherVideo.jpg'  // Below properties are optional
        thumbnail_loc: "..", title: "..", description: "..", etc: ".." }
    ]
  }
]

Other options might come soon, e.g. to automatically use routes in your app to build the sitemap.

Example (from Meteorpedia)

sitemaps.add('/mw_AllPages_sitemap.xml', function() {
  var out = [], pages = WikiPages.find().fetch();
  _.each(pages, function(page) {
    out.push({
      page: 'read/' + page.name,
      lastmod: page.lastUpdated
    });
  });
  return out;
});

You can see this output here: http://www.meteorpedia.com/mw_AllPages_sitemap.xml

Contributors

Thanks to @zol, @tarang, @dandv, @DirkStevens, for various PRs as listed in History.md.