Sitemap Plugin (sitemap)

The sitemap plugin automatically generates a sitemap.xml file for your documentation site. This helps search engines discover, crawl, and index your content more effectively, which can improve your site’s visibility in search results.

Enabling the Plugin

Add the sitemap plugin to the plugins object in your config.js:

// config.js
module.exports = {
  // ...
  plugins: {
    sitemap: {
      defaultChangefreq: 'weekly',
      defaultPriority: 0.8
    },
    // ... other plugins
  },
  // ...
};

Configuration Options

All options for the sitemap plugin are optional. If an option is not provided, the plugin will use sensible defaults.

• defaultChangefreq (String):

  • Specifies how frequently the content is likely to change
  • Possible values: 'always', 'hourly', 'daily', 'weekly', 'monthly', 'yearly', 'never'
  • Default: 'weekly'

• defaultPriority (Number):

  • Indicates the relative importance of a page in your site
  • Value between 0.0 and 1.0
  • Default: 0.8

How It Works

The sitemap plugin automatically:

1. Scans all generated HTML pages during the build process
2. Creates a sitemap.xml file in the root of your site output directory
3. Includes all pages with their URLs, last modification dates, and configured priorities

The plugin uses your siteUrl property from the config.js file to create absolute URLs, which is required for a valid sitemap. Make sure you have a siteUrl defined:

module.exports = {
  siteUrl: 'https://yourdomain.com', // No trailing slash
  // ... other config
};

Overriding Per-Page Settings with Frontmatter

You can override the default sitemap settings for individual pages by adding specific frontmatter properties:

---
title: "Important Page"
description: "This is a very important page that changes frequently"
sitemap:
  changefreq: 'daily'
  priority: 1.0
---

Excluding Pages from the Sitemap

If you want to exclude specific pages from the sitemap, you can add the following to your frontmatter:

---
title: "Private Page"
description: "This page should not appear in search engines"
sitemap: false
---

Verifying Your Sitemap

After building your site, check the generated sitemap at your-site/sitemap.xml. You can also submit the sitemap URL to search engines like Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools to help them discover and index your content more efficiently.