 Web design note:
[
All web sites should include a site map once they grow above one or two
pages. This is a hierarchical visual model of the pages and other files
making up a Web site and it could be 'graphical'. Site maps help users navigate through a Web site that has more than one page by showing the user a diagram of the entire site's contents. Similar to a book's table of contents, the site map makes it easier for a user to find information on a site without having to navigate through all the site's pages. Also, in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), a site map can make it easier for a search engine spider to find all a site's pages.
This should be one of the first pages to be set up, as from a development point of view it can
also be used as a simple database to list the web page files contained in the web site.
This page is totally separate to a sitemap.xml file which can be created
as part of the
site, but is a site map in a format recognisable by search engines like Google.
In fact if you open a Google account and use their Webmaster tools
(recommended) there are links to sites which can generate sample files
in xml format that can be uploaded to Google to assist its search
routines to index your web site content. These files are also
easily editable with a text editor to update manually once you
understand the simple record format.
] |
This page contains a simple site map showing pages and items directly related
to this site. External links are summarised if relevant.
| Web design note:
[ Other files which make up part of the website but which you will not
normally see: 1)
googlexxxxx verification file to identify site owner, 2)
robots.txt - can control which directories search engines should
cover, no point in covering the application web pages, they are not a
'web site', 3)
sitemap.xml - sitemap in xml format, read by search engines such as
Google to know which pages to scan.
] |
