Aimy Sitemap for Joomla! Websites: Part 1 Configuration
Channel: Netzum Sorglos Software GmbH
Date: 17/03/2015

This video tutorial introduces you to Aimy Sitemap - a Joomla! extension
for generating XML and HTML sitemaps.

Part 1 shows how to make the configuration of the sitemap generator.

Download this Joomla! extensions for free on https://www.aimy-extension.com/

Watch more videos
Part 2 - generating an XML sitemap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYDxgyhqrRM
Part 3 - generating an HTML sitemap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zvw-YLP6vWU
Part 4 - managing sitemap entries: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lT5DlWxRt50


Transcript of the video text on the configuration of the sitemap generator:
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Welcome to the Aimy Extensions Video Tutorial for the Sitemap generator.
With Aimy Sitemap you can generate XML and HTML sitemaps.
This video explains the configuration  before generating a sitemap. 

After a new installation you can directly configure the extension. You are encouraged to download the PDF-manual – at any later time you can read the manual online on our website aimy-extensions.com.

But now let's start with the configuration:
You can configure the sitemap in the "options":

First of all, you can set a path or filename for your sitemap  - default is sitemap.xml in the root directory of your Joomla! installation.
Further more you can set default values for URLs in your sitemap. That is
     * the priority. This value can range from zero to one point zero.
       It gives a hint for search engines on the relative importance of the
       URLs in relation to other pages within your site.
     * with the change frequency you indicate search engines how often they
       should visit your  website because your content changes regularly
     * with the state you can decide, if new URLs should be added to the
       sitemap by default – you  can deactivate single URLs at any later time.
       We will see that in video part 2 “Managing your sitemap”
  
On the third tab you can influence the crawler's behavior:
Should images be by default included in your sitemap?

Delay and timeout are settings depending on your server: A delay can be set if you have a rather slow server – so the crawler will wait some time before starting the next crawl. Time out can be set to stop crawling if the server does not respond for some time – both values are given in seconds.

The most interesting part are the exclude patterns. Define patterns that should not be integrated in your sitemap. We provide a start set of rules like „any images that are located in a folder thumbs“ .
You may delete our patterns or add your new patterns – each pattern must be set on one line.

On the next tab you can define, which search engines should be notified on changes of your sitemap. The current version supports Google and Bing. Please note that this is the general configuration only. The notification itself has to be started manually later on.

The last tab is the common Permissions Tab you might know from other Joomla! extensions:
Define which user groups are allowed to work on the sitemap.

After you have made your settings, click save and close to proceed.
At any later time you can come back to the settings via the options button on the right side of the panel.

You could start crawling your website now.

But let me give one last hint on the configuration first:

Besides the settings in the options you can influence the crawler with the robots.txt file
With this file you can inform crawlers or web bots which areas of the website should not be visited.
Aimy's crawler will read this file as well.
Aimy Sitemap comes along with a simple editor for it. If you already have a file, this one will be loaded – a default template if none can be found.

You can use the standard for any crawler.

Or you can give special instructions for Aimy Sitemap only.

If you saved your changes it is finally time to crawl your website.
While the crawler is running you get a live report  on the crawled URLs.
You can already see if errors occur or which files  are skipped because of exclude patterns.

At the end the results are summed up.
Let’s have a look at the error. This is a point from the menu, that has no article behind it.
We should fix this on our website later on.

Now you can manage your sitemap.

Thanks for your attention so far. Please proceed with the next video on Managing and Generating your XML-Sitemap.