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Sitemap

Posted: Sun Aug 23, 2015 6:51 pm
by DoctorWeb
Ive read carefully the pages in the HELP file about sitemap, and understand what I must do in it,. but just cant find it. Ive searched seemingly everywhere. Is it some add on we need to generate outside, or does Qucik&EasyWebBuilder do this for us? If not can you suggest where I can find an XML: writer 9and some instructions) to try and make one, and maybe say how i get it into the folder to be uploaded.
Many thanks

Re: Sitemap

Posted: Sun Aug 23, 2015 8:40 pm
by Pablo
The sitemap file (sitemap.xml) will automatically be generated when you publish the website.
it will be uploaded to the root of your site.

Re: Sitemap

Posted: Tue Aug 25, 2015 5:51 am
by DoctorWeb
OK, Thanks for that
I thought I had to do something else before it worked.
It makes life VERY easy, compared to the last two programs I used (Dreamweaver and Netscape Navigator!)

Re: Sitemap

Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2018 10:02 am
by DoctorWeb
Im getting back advice from google and an SEO specialist company, that there is no SITEMAP and no ROBOTS.txt file with my site. Why is this? The above answers say its generated automatically, and the HELP file suggests it is. In the root (public_html) area of my hosting I can see sitemal.xml, but its a blank icon with no contents. There is no trace of any Robots file at all>

Have I switched this off inadvertently? How can i cactivate it and get these showing?

The website is http://dietsthatwork.co.uk

but it is the same on all the sites I run.

Many Thanks

Re: Sitemap

Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2018 8:23 pm
by Pablo
Your sitemap is here:
http://dietsthatwork.co.uk/sitemap.xml

robots.txt is not generated by the application, you will need to create that yourself or configure it on the server.

Re: Sitemap

Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2018 8:24 pm
by betwixt
I can see the 'sitemap.xml' here but no 'robots.txt' file.

If you have a google webmaster account they should send you a file (or instructions to create one) with a special name, something like 'google123456789.html' which you have to upload to your web site manually. I suggest you do that if you havent already.

Brian.

Re: Sitemap

Posted: Mon Jan 06, 2020 12:32 pm
by DoctorWeb
Thanks Brian.
I have tried that a couple of times and each time Google try and lure me in to pay $ 10 every month or so, simply to use their business email account (which I dont want, I have menu own email addresses - I certainly don't need to tag @GMAIL onto my email addresses!) and some more Cloud storage (I have far too much already ready).

I must have spent many days wasting my time staggering around trying to learn this, and now have upgraded to version 7, which makes huge problems and means many of my web sites are broken (they don't upgrade to V7 automatically - all regular text for example has gone really weird since I upgraded one site. I dare not touch the others and am still using v5 and v6 to make changes to them!)_

Is there no other organisation that gives this. robot.txt. file except Google?

Re: Sitemap

Posted: Mon Jan 06, 2020 11:30 pm
by betwixt
robots.txt is a very simple text file you can create and upload yourself. At its simplest it contains only two lines:

User-Agent: *
Allow: /

You can customise it as you wish. 'User-Agent' is a kind of filter that blocks or allows certain browsers, "Allow: /" is a path that search engines are allowed or restricted to follow. The example above says "any browser is allowed and it can search anywhere". There are other options to discourage robotic searchers from going places you don't want them. Note that it doesn't stop them looking elsewhere, it just tells them what you want them to do.

If it exists and isn't hidden, you can see a web site robots.txt file by appending it to the site name. A good example of how it can direct different robots to different places is to examine "www.bbc.co.uk/robots.txt" and note the names of different search engines and paths in it.

Brian.

Re: Sitemap

Posted: Sun Jan 26, 2020 6:36 pm
by DoctorWeb
Thanks Brian, I think your answer took some time to construct,

I gather that I should make my own robots.txt file,
from the two lines of code:
User-Agent: *
Allow: /
Presumably I add these two lines inside a folder and upload that into the root level of the web site, using the ftp programme I use (Yummy ftp) ?

(Still being hounded by Google to add a robot text and to sign up for their business account.)

Re: Sitemap

Posted: Sun Jan 26, 2020 10:05 pm
by betwixt
Yes, just create it as plain text and upload it to the root folder of the web site. Obviously customize it if you want to exclude robots from scanning your pages but note that obeying it is voluntary. Reputable web crawlers will honor it but nasty ones will see it as a treasure map to snoop where something might be hidden!

I have a Google verification file but no business account or hounding from them. Try going to:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/#?modal_active=none
and click on the "sign in" in the top right corner. When it takes you to the sign in page, create a new account and see what happens.

Brian.