manifest / seo / static-sitemap-generator

Static Sitemap Generator

Static XML sitemap generation for WordPress with news, image, video sitemaps and WP-CLI.

by Laban The Great · github.com/labanthegreat/static-sitemap-generator · website

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Install

No release zip yet. The repository archive installs, but the folder name will carry the branch suffix and updates will not flow:

wp plugin install https://github.com/labanthegreat/static-sitemap-generator/archive/refs/heads/main.zip

Readme github.com/labanthegreat/static-sitemap-generator ↗

Generates static XML sitemap files on disk instead of building them dynamically on each request. Sitemaps follow the sitemaps.org protocol and are written to the WordPress root directory using the Filesystem API.

Version: 2.0.0 Requires WordPress: 6.0 Requires PHP: 8.0 License: GPL-2.0-or-later

Features

Writes static .xml files to disk -- no database queries on crawl requests
Sitemap index with automatic splitting at 50,000 URLs per file
Per-post-type and per-taxonomy sitemaps
Author archive sitemaps
Custom URL entries (one per line, with optional priority and changefreq)
Google News sitemap (posts from the last 48 hours, filterable by category/tag)
Google Image sitemap (featured images, galleries, inline content images)
Google Video sitemap (YouTube/Vimeo detection via oEmbed)
Hreflang support for WPML and Polylang
XSL stylesheet for human-readable sitemap viewing in browsers
Optional gzip-compressed .xml.gz output
Automatic regeneration on content changes (publish, update, delete) with debouncing
Scheduled regeneration via WP-Cron (hourly, daily, weekly, or disabled)
Search engine ping (Google, Bing) on sitemap update
Automatic robots.txt integration
Per-post exclusion via meta box (_ssg_exclude_sitemap post meta)
XML validation against the sitemaps.org XSD schema
Batched queries (500 posts per batch) to keep memory usage low on large sites
Full WP-CLI support

Installation

Upload the static-sitemap-generator directory to /wp-content/plugins/.
Activate through Plugins in the WordPress admin.
Go to Settings > Sitemap to configure.

On activation, the plugin sets default options, schedules the cron job, and generates an initial sitemap. On uninstall, it removes all generated files, options, post meta, and cron events.

Configuration

The settings page at Settings > Sitemap has the following tabs:

General -- Post types, taxonomies, author archives, priority/changefreq values, excluded posts, custom URLs, auto-regeneration schedule, search engine ping toggle, XSL stylesheet toggle, hreflang toggle.
News -- Enable/disable Google News sitemap, publication name, language, category/tag filters.
Images -- Enable/disable image sitemap generation.
Videos -- Enable/disable video sitemap generation.
Advanced -- Gzip compression.
Status -- Last generation time, URL count, file list, validation results. Includes "Generate Now" and "Validate" buttons.

Individual posts can be excluded from the sitemap using the "Exclude from Sitemap" meta box in the post editor.

WP-CLI Commands

All commands are registered under the wp sitemap namespace.

Generate sitemaps

wp sitemap generate [--type=<type>]

Options:

--type=<type> -- Sitemap type to generate. Accepts all, standard, news, images, video. Default: all.

# Generate everything
wp sitemap generate

# Generate only the news sitemap
wp sitemap generate --type=news

# Generate only the standard post/taxonomy/author sitemaps
wp sitemap generate --type=standard

Show status

wp sitemap status

Displays last generation time, total URLs, file count, sitemap URL, last ping time, and total file size.

List generated files

wp sitemap list [--format=<format>]

Options:

--format=<format> -- Output format. Accepts table, csv, json. Default: table.

wp sitemap list
wp sitemap list --format=json

Validate sitemaps

wp sitemap validate

Runs XML well-formedness checks, XSD schema validation, URL count/file size limit checks, W3C date format validation, and cross-file duplicate URL detection.

Ping search engines

wp sitemap ping

Sends ping requests to Google and Bing (and any endpoints added via the ssg_ping_endpoints filter).

Remove generated files

wp sitemap clean [--yes]

Deletes all generated sitemap files and clears stored metadata. Prompts for confirmation unless --yes is passed.

Hooks and Filters

Filters

ssg_included_post_types Modify the list of post types included in the sitemap.

add_filter( 'ssg_included_post_types', function ( array $post_types ): array {
    $post_types[] = 'product';
    return $post_types;
} );

ssg_included_taxonomies Modify the list of taxonomies included in the sitemap.

add_filter( 'ssg_included_taxonomies', function ( array $taxonomies ): array {
    return array_diff( $taxonomies, array( 'post_tag' ) );
} );

ssg_post_type_query_args Modify the WP_Query arguments used when querying posts for a given post type.

add_filter( 'ssg_post_type_query_args', function ( array $args, string $post_type ): array {
    if ( 'post' === $post_type ) {
        $args['date_query'] = array( array( 'after' => '1 year ago' ) );
    }
    return $args;
}, 10, 2 );

ssg_post_type_urls Filter the final URL entries array for a post type sitemap before it is written to disk.

add_filter( 'ssg_post_type_urls', function ( array $urls, string $post_type ): array {
    // Modify entries as needed.
    return $urls;
}, 10, 2 );

ssg_taxonomy_urls Filter URL entries for a taxonomy sitemap.

add_filter( 'ssg_taxonomy_urls', function ( array $urls, string $taxonomy ): array {
    return $urls;
}, 10, 2 );

ssg_author_urls Filter URL entries for the author sitemap.

ssg_custom_urls Filter custom URL entries parsed from the settings textarea.

ssg_hreflang_entries Filter hreflang alternate link entries for a specific post.

add_filter( 'ssg_hreflang_entries', function ( array $entries, int $post_id ): array {
    return $entries;
}, 10, 2 );

ssg_ping_endpoints Modify or add search engine ping endpoints.

add_filter( 'ssg_ping_endpoints', function ( array $endpoints, string $sitemap_url ): array {
    $endpoints['yandex'] = 'https://blogs.yandex.ru/pings/?status=success&url=' . rawurlencode( $sitemap_url );
    return $endpoints;
}, 10, 2 );

ssg_robots_sitemap_lines Filter the sitemap directive lines appended to robots.txt.

add_filter( 'ssg_robots_sitemap_lines', function ( array $lines, array $options ): array {
    return $lines;
}, 10, 2 );

Actions

ssg_after_ping Fires after search engine ping requests complete. Receives the results array keyed by engine name.

add_action( 'ssg_after_ping', function ( array $results ): void {
    // Log or notify.
} );

Post Meta

_ssg_exclude_sitemap -- Set to 1 on a post to exclude it from the sitemap. Managed via the meta box in the post editor.

Custom URLs Format

In the settings textarea, enter one URL per line. Optionally append priority and change frequency separated by pipes:

https://example.com/custom-page|0.7|weekly
https://example.com/another-page

If omitted, priority defaults to 0.5 and changefreq defaults to monthly.

Generated Files

All files are written to the WordPress root directory (ABSPATH):

sitemap.xml -- Sitemap index referencing all sub-sitemaps
sitemap-{post_type}.xml -- Per-post-type sitemaps (split with -2, -3 suffixes if exceeding 50,000 URLs)
sitemap-tax-{taxonomy}.xml -- Per-taxonomy sitemaps
sitemap-authors.xml -- Author archive sitemap
sitemap-custom.xml -- Custom URLs sitemap
sitemap-news.xml -- Google News sitemap
sitemap-images.xml -- Image sitemap
sitemap-video.xml -- Video sitemap
sitemap-style.xsl -- XSL stylesheet for browser viewing