How to Add Mark’s Sitemap to Your Site

icon1 Posted by Rochelle in How To..., Site Building Strategies on 02 11th, 2008 | 7 responses

April 23, 2008 Edit: This mod is for Build A Niche Store (BANS) sites that are v1 or v2 only. BANS v3 includes a sitemap so there is no need to add this mod to v3+ sites.

You can help visitors find what they want or get around your site by adding a sitemap. BANS forum member Mark (aka meetmydomains) created a great sitemap that automatically updates whenever you add a new store page. It does not, however, show content pages.

Unlike the dynamic sitemap, this sitemap is meant to be displayed from within your site and viewed by people. It will also help spiders index your site. It is ok to use this mod and the dynamic sitemap mod by Webmogul together.

You can view Mark’s instructions for this mod at http://www.thenichestorebuilder.com/build-a-niche-store-sitemap-mod-complete-version.htm.

Note: If you added this mod to your v2 store and then updated the store to v3 then you need to read How to Redirect Your Old Sitemap to Your New Sitemap.
 

My instructions to add Mark’s sitemap to your site:

Step One
 Go to FrontControl.php (click here if you don’t know how to do this).
  
 Save a copy of the original code (click here for instructions on how to do this).
  
 Copy and paste the contents of frontcontrol-changes.txt directly ABOVE the function getMainPageParent(){ code.
  
 Save changes and view site for errors.
Step Two
 Log in to your site’s Admin and click the ‘Content Pages‘ tab and ‘Create Content Page‘ link.
  
 Create your new content page and name it something like, “My-Niche-Store-Sitemap.” If you like you can add some text to the Page Content area but this is optional.
  
 Save page.
Step Three
 Click the ‘Template‘ tab and ‘style.css‘ link for the template you are using.
  
 Save a copy of the original code (click here for instructions on how to do this).
  
 Copy and paste the contents of stylescss-changes.txt to the bottom of styles.css directly BELOW the /* Miscellaneous End */ tag.
  
 Save changes and view site for errors.
Step Four
 Note: Skip this step if you did the Permalink or RSS Content Page mods. This is a duplication of code used in these mods and adding it again will cause a fatal error on your site.
 Click the ‘header.php‘ link for the template you are using.
  
 Copy and paste the contents of header-changes-01.txt to header.php directly ABOVE the </head> tag.
  
 Save changes and view site for errors.
Step Five
 Decide if you want any text added to your Sitemap content page (added via the Page Content section) to be displayed above the sitemap results or below them:
 

  • For text ABOVE results add the code in step six to footer.php from the template you are using
  • For text BELOW results add the code in step six to header.php from the template you are using

Step Six
 Copy the contents of header-changes-02.txt and paste it to one of the following:
 

  • header.php (any text you add will be below the results) – paste contents directly BELOW the <div id=”content” class=”narrowcolumn”> tag .
  • footer.php (any text you add will be above the results) – paste contents ABOVE all other code in footer.php

 Change the following bit of code before you save your changes:
 
  • http://www.MYURL.com/MY-SITEMAP-URL to your sitemap’s URL
  
 Save changes and view site for errors.
done

Rochelle

7 Responses to “How to Add Mark’s Sitemap to Your Site”

  1. How to Add a Dynamic Sitemap to your Site | Niche Store Strategies says:
    February 11, 2008 at 11:41 am

    [...] sitemap is strictly for search engines and is not meant to be viewed by people. You can also add Mark’s sitemap, which is meant for people. It is ok to have both this dynamic sitemap and Mark’s sitemap on [...]

  2. How I Create a New Niche Store | Niche Store Strategies says:
    February 24, 2008 at 5:08 pm

    [...] Mark’s Sitemap [...]

  3. How to Add a Single RSS Content Page to Your Site | Niche Store Strategies says:
    February 24, 2008 at 7:47 pm

    [...] Skip this step if you did the Permalink mod. This is a duplication of code used in step four of the Permalink mod [...]

  4. How to Add Multiple RSS Content Pages to Your Site | Niche Store Strategies says:
    February 24, 2008 at 9:18 pm

    [...] Skip this step if you did the Permalink mod. This is a duplication of code used in step four of the Permalink mod [...]

  5. How to Add Permalinks (or Link-Backs or Trackbacks) to your Site | Niche Store Strategies says:
    February 25, 2008 at 10:33 am

    [...] permalink 03.txt and save your changes. This code is duplicate code from the RSS Content Page and Mark’s Sitemap mods and is not needed [...]

  6. Mods that will require redoing after updating to v3 of BANS | Niche Store Strategies says:
    March 4, 2008 at 10:13 am

    [...] How to Add Mark’s Sitemap to Your Site [...]

  7. How to Redirect Your Old Sitemap to Your New Sitemap | Niche Store Strategies says:
    March 9, 2008 at 9:06 am

    [...] you added the How to Add Mark’s Sitemap to Your Site mod to a v2 store, then updated the store to v3, then you will need to add the mod detailed in this [...]

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