Google SitemapAdmin

Woodymon:

It is likely you have a prefix (e.g. zen_) on your db tablenames and thus uploading the uninstall.sql through Zen Cart's sqlpatch tool did not work for you. In these cases try pasting the sql code into the sqlpatch tool edit box.

It's strange that you would have duplicate entries (table records) with the exact same parameters (fields) in your related db tables. When running a SQL statement which would duplicate pre-existing records in a table, by default MySQL should report back the record already exists, and not update the table with those particular records.

But if doubt and you are having issues (and you know what you are doing) phpmyadmin is the way to go.

Woody
Woodymon

I tried using the sqlpatch tool, and that reported errors about missing tables: it even reported the correct database name, prefix and table, but reported the table as missing. In fact as far as I coul tell all was correct, but sql patch wasn't happy about something!!!

I was able to load this mod, but when I click: STEP 1: Click [HERE] to create / update your site map.

I only get a blank popup.

-lindasdd

Can anyone help me with this??

I think I have everything configured right....
I 777'ed the xml files.
Ran the generator:

Processing file: /home//public_html/sitemapproducts.xml OK! Written 1596 records, 335410 bytes
Generated Google Product Sitemap Successfully - http://www.***.com/sitemapproducts.xml

However when I go to look at the file it says:

Google Sitemap http://www.*********.com/sitemapproducts.xml
Number of sitemaps in this Google sitemap index: 0

So it doesnt show any links...

But then I edit the file... And I see the links are there!

:frusty::frusty::frusty::frusty:

What do i do???

milobloom:

So it doesn't show any links...
But then I edit the file... And I see the links are there!
What do i do???

I don't understand what is meant by this. What is "it"? When do you see the file does not "show any links"? How would you not know without opening the file in a text editor? :wacko:

By default the mod should generate four (4) XML files. The index file is:
sitemapindex.xml

And the other three:
sitemapproducts.xml
sitemapcategories.xml
sitemapezpages.xml

(the last file depends on your settings in ZC Admin > Configuration > Google XML Sitemap)

Be sure you have 777 perms on all four files when you are generating them (then recommend turning off write bit when done generating).

The mod should throw an error for each of the four files when you try to generate without the correct perms.

Note, if you did not upload the four xml files from the mod distribution then you have to physically create each xml file (empty file) in a text editor and upload, before the initial sitemap generation.

Hope some of this helps.

Woody

I have the xml files set to 777
I also made the files blank.

I re ran and tried to recreate the xml files.
It says they are fine. even shows the product counts:

http://www.nothingbutcostumes.com/googlesitemap.php

but when i click on the next link ( to see the products )
it doesn't look like they are written to.

http://www.nothingbutcostumes.com/sitemapproducts.xml

Strange....

So whats stranger...

If I go in and edit my
http://www.nothingbutcostumes.com/sitemapproducts.xml

and i see lines like this:

<url> <loc>http://www.nothingbutcostumes.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=7980</loc> <lastmod>2007-07-05</lastmod> <changefreq>weekly</changefreq> <priority>1.00</priority> </url> <url> <loc>http://www.nothingbutcostumes.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=8334</loc> <lastmod>2007-06-29</lastmod> <changefreq>weekly</changefreq> <priority>0.53</priority> </url> <url> <loc>http://www.nothingbutcostumes.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=7783</loc> <lastmod>2007-07-05</lastmod> <changefreq>weekly</changefreq> <priority>0.40</priority> </url> <url> <loc>http://www.nothingbutcostumes.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=975</loc> <lastmod>2006-07-27</lastmod> <changefreq>weekly</changefreq> <priority>0.39</priority> </url> <url> <loc>http://www.nothingbutcostumes.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=8553</loc> <lastmod>2007-07-12</lastmod> <changefreq>weekly</changefreq> <priority>0.34</priority> </url>

but if i go to:

http://www.nothingbutcostumes.com/sitemapproducts.xml

I dont see any links....

milobloom:

If I go in and edit my
http://www.nothingbutcostumes.com/sitemapproducts.xml

but if i go to:
http://www.nothingbutcostumes.com/sitemapproducts.xml

I dont see any links....

The URL's above are exactly the same. I am totally lost on what you trying to say here.

What do you mean when you say you click on the next link?

Note the generated xml files are not intended for you or anyone else to open/view or navigate in a browser.

They are for Google software to scan. ;-)

Generate the files, ping Google, then log into your Webmasters account the next day to see the results.

I suggest you log into your Google Webmasters account and review the basic help documentation ;-)

Woody

Boy am i confused. Are you not supposed to see the paths for the sitemaps???
When I go to my other site, and click this url:

http://www.allforyourwedding.com/~noah/sitemapproducts.xml

It comes up with this page with many links on it (1269 i think). As shown here:

Google Sitemap http://www.allforyourwedding.com/~noah/sitemapproducts.xml
Number of URLs in this Google Sitemap: 1269

When I go to my other site's googlesitemaps - As shown here:

http://www.nothingbutcostumes.com/googlesitemap.php

It says that it generated 1760 records. S per below:

Processing file: /home/nothingb/public_html/sitemapproducts.xml OK! Written 1760 records, 369850 bytes
Generated Google Product Sitemap Successfully - http://www.nothingbutcostumes.com/sitemapproducts.xml

But when I click on the same one as the other site:

http://www.nothingbutcostumes.com/sitemapproducts.xml

I dont see any paths....

Google Sitemap http://www.nothingbutcostumes.com/sitemapcategories.xml
Number of sitemaps in this Google sitemap index: 0

And the strange thing is if I edit

http://www.nothingbutcostumes.com/sitemapproducts.xml

In my ftp editor, I see all the links are in the file. Am I waiting for something to happen before they appear by clicking on: ??

http://www.nothingbutcostumes.com/sitemapproducts.xml

If so then I guess I did everything right... I just thought I would see something there.

Milo

milobloom:

Boy am i confused. Are you not supposed to see the paths for the sitemaps???

Could be you have employed GSM mod in Zen Cart running on a subdomain? So the directory where the xml files are written is not the directory you think they are being written.

I would not recommend posting the FULL paths for publicly accessible/writable directories in a public forum.

Woody

Ok.

If that was the case... Then does it mean my sitemap works?
Well actually I just checked google and it did...
Wanted to see if I can submit it to Yahoo.

Can these submissions be included in the sitemap admin?:

Ask.com:
http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http://www.your_site.com/your_sitemap.xml

LiveSearch (aka Live.com, MSN, Microsoft):
only autodiscovery using robots.txt with the following text:
Sitemap: <sitemap_location>
(explained here: http://livesearch.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!8560B877FE8E9138!1299.entry)

When I create the sitemap I get messages telling me that four pages have been successfully created. However, when I try to view the sitemapezpages.xml, I get the following error:

XML Parsing Error: not well-formed
Location: (the URL location)
Line Number 8, Column 49: <loc>http://siteurl.com/page.html?chapter=1&id=1</loc>

It is objecting to the second parameter passed to the page, appearing to get stuck on the second = sign. Is anyone else having this problem? What on earth can I do to fix it?

I am currently getting around this problem by turning off the ez-pages while I create the sitemapindex, then turning them back off again. This prevents them from appearing in the Google sitemap, but at least removes the error which seemed to be stopping Google from crawling the site at all...

onlyrey:

Can these submissions be included in the sitemap admin?:

Ask.com:
http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http://www.your_site.com/your_sitemap.xml
exactly what i was about to ask

Also am I might be missing something but

I have set up a cronjob to automatically create the sitemaps every week and i have set the ping=yes, however from looking at the code it only appears to ping google and not yahoo, would it be possible to add Yahoo and Ask to this so they are automatically pinged as well?

dbabbage:

When I create the sitemap I get messages telling me that four pages have been successfully created. However, when I try to view the sitemapezpages.xml, I get the following error:

Note the xml files really are not intended to be "viewed" by your or the public. They are only created for Google to parse.

At any rate, which program are you attempting to open/view the XML file with?

You should be able to open the file in a text editor just fine (e.g. NotePad ++).

One note: I just discovered the module is adding zen_id's to the entries in sitemapezpages.xml

This is NOT good. Best for you to remove them.

So for:

<loc>http://www.your_domain.com/your_shop/index.php?main_page=page&id=12&chapter=2&zenid=blahblahblah</loc>

Change to:

<loc>http://www.your_domain.com/your_shop/index.php?main_page=page&id=12&chapter=2</loc>

Woody

Woodymon:

One note: I just discovered the module is adding zen_id's to the entries in sitemapezpages.xml
Strange. The GSM output I generated late last month contained zen_id's in sitemapezpages.xml. However I just generated updated XML output, and I do not observe zen_id's. So I guess problem solved. But just in case you should check your output BEFORE pinging Google to come parse your GSM xml.

Woody

onlyrey:

Can these submissions be included in the sitemap admin?:
Ask.com:
LiveSearch

The latest version of GSM mod supports Sitemaps 0.9 protocol. So if you have your sitemap listed in robots.txt any service you subscribe to supporting the standard should be able to use the XML feed generated by the GSM mod.

(e.g. Google Sitemaps, Yahoo Site Explorer, etc)

See:

1. http://about.ask.com/en/docs/about/webmasters.shtml#22

2. http://livesearch.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!8560B877FE8E9138!1342.entry

Note MS Live Search sitemap product is now in beta (e.g. sitemap tools, live search portal, etc). You can sign up for beta account. Instructions at above URL.

Note these "sitemap feeds" are independent from "product search feeds". So it is recommended you also sign up and generate feeds for GoogleBase Product Search and MS Live Product Search. (Unlike these services which are free, "Yahoo Product Submit" is a paid CPC service which feeds "Yahoo Shopping"). And there are many other free "shopping search services" you can create custom feeds for.

Woody

Thanks a lot for the latest addition to this excellent mod.

I've just taken the opportunity to relocate my xml files to a sub folder and have discovered that this piece of functionality doesn't appear to work 100%. Although the xml files are generated in the sub folder, the URLs in sitemapindex.xml don't contain the sub folder, i.e they continue to point to sitemaps in the root folder.

This isn't a huge issue as I've just moved them back to root but I thought you'd like to know!.

ARRSE:

Thanks a lot for the latest addition to this excellent mod.

I've just taken the opportunity to relocate my xml files to a sub folder and have discovered that this piece of functionality doesn't appear to work 100%. Although the xml files are generated in the sub folder, the URLs in sitemapindex.xml don't contain the sub folder, i.e they continue to point to sitemaps in the root folder.

This isn't a huge issue as I've just moved them back to root but I thought you'd like to know!.

Andrew whom developed this mod and latest updates is no longer around these parts.

You can change where you write the four xml files in the mods Configuration menu.

The module utilizes paths set in your ZC configure.php files, which indicate the root of your shop (usually different from your webroot).

There should be no reason to move the xml files into a child directory of your shop root, if that is what you have done.

If you are running your shop on a add-on or sub-domain that may be contributing to your issue.

Woody

Woodymon,
Thanks for your reply and I wasn't aware that Andrew had moved on.

The point I was trying to make is that the setting in the Configuration menu doesn't work. Lets say you set it to write to a subdirectory of feed and your main site install is in /www/ on your system.

The module will quite happily create the 4 xml files in /www/feed but when you open /www/feed/sitemapindex.html you will find that it points to http://yoururl.com/sitemapproducts.xml not http://yoururl.com/feed/sitemapproducts.xml, etc.

As I say I have just moved my sitemaps back to my root folder and it is fine. I thought I'd report this issue just in case anyone else was having the same difficulty.

ARRSE:

Woodymon,
Thanks for your reply and I wasn't aware that Andrew had moved on.

The point I was trying to make is that the setting in the Configuration menu doesn't work. Lets say you set it to write to a subdirectory of feed and your main site install is in /www/ on your system.

The module will quite happily create the 4 xml files in /www/feed but when you open /www/feed/sitemapindex.html you will find that it points to http://yoururl.com/sitemapproducts.xml not http://yoururl.com/feed/sitemapproducts.xml, etc.

As I say I have just moved my sitemaps back to my root folder and it is fine. I thought I'd report this issue just in case anyone else was having the same difficulty.

Using the latest mod version I can place the sitemap in whichever directory I please as long as it is in the path of the shop.

You have to use the full absolute path in the configuration
e.g. /home/account_name/public_html/
(the ending forward slash is important)

If your shop is in /home/account_name/public_html/shop/
then you cannot write the feed to
/home/account_name/public_html/feed/
since it is not in the path of your shop.

But you could put the feed into
/home/account_name/public_html/shop/feed/
or
/home/account_name/public_html/shop/
or
/home/account_name/public_html/

See your configure.php file for the proper path.

Hope this makes sense.

Woody