Generating a sitemap for a static site

How to move beyond a collection of HTML files

Photo by Nik Shuliahin on Unsplash

I’ve previously written about the benefits of static sites and how to layer dynamic functionality on top of them. In this article I want to introduce a simple technique for adding a sitemap to your static site.

A sitemap file can be used by search engines, or any other software, to find out about the pages available on your site. It’s essentially a machine-readable index which lives on your site alongside your content. The XML-based sitemap protocol is very straightforward and an excellent starting point for those looking to evolve their knowledge beyond plain HTML.

The sitemap contains a list of URLs with some additional, optional information. You can experiment with the data you wish to include, but in this example, I’ll be including the following:

• loc: this is required, and it’s simply the URL itself.
• lastmod: this is the last modification date of the file; i.e. when the page was last updated. It can include the time if you want, but I’ll just focus on the date here.
• changefreq: the ‘change frequency’ i.e. how often the content typically changes. This can vary wildly between your home page and a one-off article.

In theory, you can update your sitemap file manually, in a text editor, just as you might edit your HTML files. This is perfectly feasible for a small, rarely updated site, but automating the task gives you one less thing to worry about.

The aim

Once we’re done, we should have a simple script that we can run to generate a sitemap file for our collection of static pages. The script can be run on-demand, or via an automated process, depending on your personal setup.

The setup

Every site — even a simple collection of HTML files — is unique, with different requirements, and different standards. In this article, I will use my own site as a reference, and highlight aspects that might vary in your specific case.

Localhost

I edit my content on my own Mac laptop before uploading it to a server. It’s easy to use any available text editor to do so, and I have a…