Dynamic google sitemap creation for a asp.net Ektron site

Question

We are planning on using google for our search functionality in an Ektron site. We have to do this because we want pages from a few sites outside of the actual Ektron site to be included in the search results. The problem with this is newly published content won't show up in our sites search results for as long as two weeks unless we can dynamically create a sitemap that has all of our new content in it and then tell google to re-index our site. Ektron pulls all of this new content dynamically from the database so simply scanning the web directory for files won't be enough.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Dynamically creating a google site map isn't hard at all. If Ektrons API allows you to consume the current site map, you could easily transform that into a Google Sitemap.

Answer 2

Our basic approach to this it simply spin through content item in every folder in the workarea and check to see if it has a valid template (not cmslogin.aspx) and has been flagged as content searchable. We then generate a list of links in sitemap.xml format.

This is all done within a simple handler wired up to respond to /sitemap.xml requests.

Answer 3

I use to work with Ektron at my old job (didn't really like it). But here is the best way to do a sitemap with Ektron. Create an aspx page for generating the sitemap, DO NOT use a handler as advised above, you open up the ability for abuse if you do, and believe me repeated attacks to a sitemap generator thru Ektron will kill your site. Check out the link below, it is a basic example of how to do it.

How-to Generate and Submit Your Sitemap to Google, Yahoo!, Bing, and Ask

In the area where it says "ADD THE REST OF YOUR URL'S HERE" just run a query to get all your manual alias' (which i'm assuming your using). I think the table was called UrlAliasManual, or something like that, just select the primary urls.

Hope that helps!