Joomap - Sitemap component

Article Audience: Webmasters / Administrators

Creating a sitemap is great for your users, and great for search engines. Joomap is an extremly easy to use component which generates a sitemap from the menu items you choose.

Once you install Joomap, you just go to Components > Joomap, configure the menus which you want to be displayed in the site map, you can set some display options such as whether to expand section categories (recommended) and you are ready.

If you want certain menu items not to be visible you can find the menu in the drop down list and click on the arrow to exclude it.

Once you have setup all your settings click to http://www.youwebsite.com/index.php?option=com_joomap to check that the sitemap looks correct.

Finally, create a link on one of your menus to the sitemap component. Or even better, in your website footer create a Site Map link to the component.

The best thing to do is use sh404SEF to define a friendly URL to the component e.g. http://www.yourwebsite.com/sitemap.html from the unfriendly url index.php?option=com_joomap and then edit your template to include the friendly link in your footer.

Google SiteMaps / Webmaster Tools 

Joomap also allows you to create XML files for Google Sitemaps protocol. This enables your website to be indexed much faster, than waiting for the next scheduled visit of the GoogleBot. This makes sure that any content you are adding gets updated quickly and without any additional effort from your side. Therefore logon to Google Webmaster tools and submit the sitemap generated by Joomap to ensure that your content is being indexed in the fastest manner possible. 

Warning: Installing 3rd party extensions may compromise Joomla's security. Make sure that you trust any 3rd party extension that you install