Requests for a Sitemap or Table of Contents for Wordpress.com blogs is nothing new it seems. One would think maintaining a master index is a relatively easy task. Adding new post links one by one is tedious at best.

Perhaps “sitemap” is a misnomer. Many thanks to Wordpress.com, we each have a true sitemap located at yoursitename.wordpress.com/sitemap.xml which Google accepts happily. “Table of Contents” or “Page Index” may be phrases that are better fitting for this article.

The best option I’ve come across is a smart number called Click to visit this external linkListmaker by Dukelupus. It’s sleek, fast, and simply works. Still, even this solution requires some manual labor. Also, the program lists all posts including drafts. I’d rather not have the added step of weeding through to pick out my draft posts and remove their corresponding HTML, so this isn’t a satisfactory option for my needs.

While Listmaker is surely a great solution for other WP users, I continue to use my personal solution, one of numerous methods available for creating and updating a sitemap. My process involves several steps initially, but once set up, the task of updating one’s sitemap will involve all of 3 steps: bookmark, copy, paste.

Caveats! This method is best for us newer-ish Wordpress.com users with less than an agonizingly long list of posts. Those with many entries may find that entering posts to a 3rd party service is is too much. I would suggest at least starting off with the Listmaker, being sure you aren’t publicizing the locations of your drafts, then optionally switch to the following method. Secondly, there’s still some manual labor involved. Remember though, the set up is a one-time deal. The usage requires much less effort.

The Set Up

1. Add a Delicious bookmarklet. Go to the Click to visit this external linkDelicious bookmarklets page and add the “Bookmark on Delicious” bookmarklet to your browser’s bookmarks toolbar.

2. Customize the Delicious bookmarklet. I’ve made two changes to the bookmarklet to customize it for my needs. The first change is a simple adjustment to the size of the Save Bookmark pop-up window. The second change removes the last part of the page title.

For example, my page title is Wordpress.com Sitemap – Instructions « ElleDoesIt. I’d rather not have all the resulting links in my sitemap list my site title. After all, if someone is reading through my sitemap, they are likely already on my site. With this customization, each bookmarked post will have the “ « ElleDoesIt” removed.

Customize the bookmarklet:

Copy to clipboard the code listed below. Paste the code into a Notepad document. Follow the code until you see “ElleDoesIt” and replace that with your site title.

javascript:(function(){x=document.title;y=x.replace('%20%C2%AB%20ElleDoesIt','');f='http://delicious.com/save?url='+encodeURIComponent(window.location.href)+'&title='+y+'&v=5&';a=function(){if(!window.open(f+'noui=1&jump=doclose','deliciousuiv5','location=yes,links=no,scrollbars=no,toolbar=no,status=no,width=550,height=294'))location.href=f+'jump=yes'};if(/Firefox/.test(navigator.userAgent)){setTimeout(a,0)}else{a()}})()

Copy the entire revised text to your clipboard. Right click on the bookmarklet name in the bookmarks toolbar and choose Properties. Erase the text in the Location field. Paste in the code (Ctrl + V). Click Save Changes (or OK).

3. Install an auto-tag Greasemonkey user script. Visit the page of the Click to visit this external linkDelicious Pre Defined Tags user script and install it. If you don’t have Click to visit this external linkGreasemonkey / Click to visit this external linkinstalled, you could click the “View script source” link on the script’s page, copy the Javascript, then hack it into the bookmarklet in Step 2. However, with over 1.4 million downloads per week and an active user base, GM is a safe-bet, painless and unobtrusive download for Firefox.

Customize the user script:

Right-click on the Greasemonkey icon in the status bar and choose Manage User Scripts. Click on Delicious Pre Defined Tags in the list on the left. Click Edit at the bottom left of the box.

Edit the line that reads var default_tags = ‘default tags go here’; by entering your own desired tag(s). I use one (and only one) tag for all my WordPress posts on Delicious: var default_tags = ‘ElleDoesIt’;. This keeps things nice and simple.

Having only one tag frees me from feeling obligated to organize my WP posts on Delicious by tag. If my goal were to make money off my WP site, I might take the time to use JS to parse my article tags into the tag field of the Delicious save form. For now, this suits my needs. It also means that, throughout all of Delicious, only my entries with my one tag will be my posts from WP. Lastly, it will help in customizing my linkroll in the next step.

4. Grab the Delicious linkroll. Visit the Click to visit this external linkLinkrolls page on Delicious to customize your linkroll. The best bet is to keep this very simple and plain. My options are Title = empty, Tags = ElleDoesIt (your one tag from step 3), Bullets = none, Sort = alphabetically, Show = none ticked.

Copy the Javascript code provided on the page and paste it into a new Notepad document. Save the file as linkroll.html. Open this new HTML file in your browser. Bookmark the file in the browser’s bookmarks toolbar alongside the Delicious bookmarklet from Step 1.

Note: You may prefer the Click to visit this external linkHTML feed over the linkroll. I opted against the feed because it doesn’t allow for alphabetical sorting as does the linkroll (please correct me if I am mistaken). If you choose to use the HTML feed, your bookmarkable link will look something like this:

http://feeds.delicious.com/html/ElleDoesIt/ElleDoesIt?count=200&tags=no&rssbutton=no

5. Create a Sitemap page on your site. From your Dashboard, click to Write a New Page. Name it Sitemap, TOC, or something your visitors will easily recognize as your list of posts. Click Save. WP has now assigned an ID to this entry. Bookmark this page in your browser’s bookmarks toolbar along with the previous bookmarks. Optionally, save it as “Edit Sitemap.” Next, click Publish to make it live and accessible to your visitors. Don’t worry. We’ll populate it shortly.

Done with the set up!

Put it to use

Above, we mentioned “3 steps: bookmark, copy, paste” and here they are.

1. Bookmark. When you write a new WP article, go to the article page (not the index page of your site) and click the Delicious bookmarklet you created in Step 1 above. Everything you need should already be filled out, leaving you to simply click Save.

2. Copy. Click the Linkroll bookmark you created in Step 4 above. Select All (Ctrl + A) and Copy. This is another time the Click to visit this external linkAutoCopy Firefox extension comes in handy.

Note: It can take a couple of minutes for your new links to show up in the linkroll.

3. Paste. Click the Edit Sitemap bookmark you created in Step 5 above. Inside the editor, paste the contents of your clipboard (Ctrl + V). Click Save.

Done with usage!

You should have a neat and up-to-date sitemap for your visitors use.

Question:

How often should I update my sitemap?

Answer:

I think the easiest way to remember is by how often your index page completely changes. If under Settings, Reading, you have Blog pages show at most set to 5 (meaning 5 posts on the index page at a time), then update your sitemap every five postings. You may choose to do more, but at least your visitors will have to look on no more than two pages (index and sitemap) to find a listing of all your posts.

Question:

So, what now?

Answer:

We wait for a better solution. I would love the option to (easily) list categories and tags with each post title. I’m not so interested in dates, but the option would be great. And finally, the ability to quickly sort post titles by date or alpha-order, ascending and descending. Am I asking for the moon? ~smile~

Happy sitemapping!