Sitemap Generator

[raymond]

Hello! I'm planning to create a new component that would automatically create sitemaps for Joomla 1.5-based websites and would like some guidance on how to go about it. I've looked through the current extensions available but unfortunately, none have been able to give me what I'd want to get out them. That is why I'd like to make one from scratch and would like to go about it correctly.

I'm a beginner when it comes to SQL and PHP but I learn pretty quickly and have a ton of free time which is why I've decided to do this myself instead of waiting for someone else to make a new component.

What I'd like to do is to generate the sitemap.xml and urllist.txt files that are used by Google Sitemaps and Yahoo! Site Explorer that help websites get their content onto search engines. It seems to me that generation of these files is a more or less simple exercise in retrieving information from the J! databases and would like some guidance on the proper way to do it.

First off, here's the sitemaps.org specification of the sitemap protocol:

Code: Select all

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
   <url>
      <loc>http://www.example.com/</loc>
      <lastmod>2005-01-01</lastmod>
      <changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
      <priority>0.8</priority>
   </url>
</urlset> 

That said, here are the things I would hopefully like to learn:
1. How I can properly query an article's URL using PHP and/or SQL taking into account the three SEF settings in the Administration backend. Are there any specific switches/plugins that I have to query? This information goes into the <loc> tags.
2. Same as above with regard to the <lastmod> tags. How can I get the last modification date data from the database onto this tag?
3. What would be a proper use of the <changefreq> and <priority> tags? At this point I assume that I can use the variable of whether or not an article is published to the frontpage as being given a higher priority than other articles. I'd probably go with asking for a default priority value and have the articles published on the frontpage as having 0.1 higher priority.
4. How do I get the component to go through each and every item in the content table? Should I use some kind of recursive script and how do I tell it to stop when its gone through each article?
5. How do I take account of Section and Category descriptions? These are pages in itself but do they have the last modification date values as well?
6. How do I take account of the menu heirarchy set up on the site? What plugins/components/modules should I also call in my script and how do I call them in the first place?

Thanks in advance for any illumination answers and suggestions. Anyone who has some free time and is most probably more knowledgeable than me with PHP and SQL is also welcome to help me in this component.

[CommodorePeter]

Why don't you take a look at other site maps that are not being developed further and use them as a models or build on them? For derivative works you just acknowledge the origins by keeping the headers. In fact sometimes you can get the original authors to review and help you out.

I would recommend Peter Davies Joomla 1.5 Sitemap from http://extensions.joomla.org/component/ ... Itemid,35/
It is pretty plain and "raw" but works in a minimalist way. He has even identified a large "to do list" but hasn't worked it for quite a while (but it works well on J1.5.1, I use it). Then take an anachronistic version from Joomla 1.0 that had all the bells and whistles such as Joomap and look under its covers for some insight in how to develop fuller features. For examples the Joomap readme has a pretty good explanation on how to interface with Google and as well as setup an appropriate css.