Where to place sitemap

[The Baby Studio]

Hi

I have been reading old posts on the sitemap and now I am a bit confused (easily done)

Where exactly should I put Sitemap.xlm and sitemap.html?

When I looked I seem to have them in more than one location. The other posts answers say place the sitemap in the "root" However I am not sure exactly where that is.

The FTP explorer shows me a \ as the top with the folders below it, I have been placing sitemap.xlm in the folder called httpdocs, which I think is the root. But I notice sitemap.html is in acatalog which is one folder down.

Should both types of sitemap be in the same folder? and is httpdocs the right place?

Thanks in advance.

D

[Paul Bulpit]

"sitemap.html" is generated by Actinic automatically, and placed in the 'acatalog' folder, again automatically, every time you make a change to your site. This is the 'full index of contents' that most websites have and can be accessed by the browsing public at large through a link on your website page(s). You don't need to worry about it and you should leave it where it is.

-oOo-

"sitemap.xml" is the special 'index of the most important things laid out in a certain way' that YOU have had generated elsewhere for the purpose of being read by a search engine.

YOU have to place it manually via ftp into the 'root' folder, but you do not need to link to it, the bots will find it themselves. It's meaningless to anybody else.

The 'root' folder is the one that already contains the file 'index.html', the 'acatalog' folder and the 'cgi-bin' folder. On a Plesk server this is usually called 'httpdocs'.

-oOo-

At this moment in time you have on your website:

A) Correct: in the grey panel near the TOP of the page a link to the public sitemap http://www.thebabystudio.co.uk/acatalog/sitemap.html which is where it should be and is working normally.

B) Incorrect: in the footer at the bottom of the page you have (added manually yourself) three unnecessary links:

1. [ xml ] (Sitemap for Googlebot)
2. [ html ] (public sitemap in wrong place)
3. [ urllist ] (Sitemap for Yahoo!bot)

Remove these links in Actinic then use ftp explorer to delete the file 'sitemap.HTML' in the httpdocs folder.

Do NOT delete 'sitemap.xml' or 'urllist.txt' which are in the right place. You should however regenerate them periodically and overwrite them with the newer updated versions.

______________
Paul

[Paul Bulpit]

Summary

1. Delete from the footer panel everything between '504 1736' and the next '<BR>':

 | Sitemap <a href="http://www.thebabystudio.co.uk/sitemap.xml">xml</a>, <a href="http://www.thebabystudio.co.uk/sitemap.html">html</a>, <a href="http://www.thebabystudio.co.uk/urllist.txt">urllist</a>

2. Delete "httpdocs/sitemap.html" from the server via ftp.



FYI, for starters (many more I'm afraid):

Quite a lot of pagename problems ( '_-_' and '___' ) are exposed by urllist.txt. Check it often to see them.

You have a typo here both in the Section Name and the page name, and a small 'b' in the Product Name of the top product in that section. The last product has got a snap-top lif.

Remove the <h2> tags from the "i-spin stroller" section name. (You can see the undesirable effect halfway down this page).

Typos on this page. (opperating, (t)hame, comliments)


Edit - links removed as problem fixed.

[The Baby Studio]

Wow pfb5 thank you for taking so much effort and looking at all the other issues.

I once had a lot of H2 tags where they shouldn't be. (SEO company advice, but implimented incorrectly by me) have been getting rid of them, must have missed that one.

The links in the footer were placed on the instruction of a paid SEO company are you sure they are doing no good?

I have seen these before ( '_-_' and '___' ) but was worried I would break something if I simply change them, can I just rename them?

We do get a few typos, often the text comes in a cut n paste from the wholesaler documentation. We try to go through and make it different, but sometimes if we have added a lot of products we misss some.

Thanks again

D