Sitemap Generation

Overview

When using GitHub Pages, a sitemap is only created when using a Jekyll theme. For all other static site generators, a GitHub Actions script is required to build the XML file.

file nane: sitemap.xml

name: Generate xml sitemap

on:
  push:
    branches: [ main ]

jobs:
  sitemap_job:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    name: Generate a sitemap

    steps:
    - name: Checkout the repo
      uses: actions/checkout@v4
      with:
        fetch-depth: 0

    - name: Generate the sitemap
      id: sitemap
      uses: cicirello/generate-sitemap@v1
      with:
        base-url-path: https://THE.URL.TO.YOUR.PAGE/

    - name: Output stats
      run: |
        echo "sitemap-path = ${{ steps.sitemap.outputs.sitemap-path }}"
        echo "url-count = ${{ steps.sitemap.outputs.url-count }}"
        echo "excluded-count = ${{ steps.sitemap.outputs.excluded-count }}"

This xml script needs to be added into each Repo you are working with.

After generating the sitemap, and testing that it displays correctly on your published site, submit it to the Google Search Console website, by navigating to the Sitemaps section and entering the filename (e.g., sitemap.xml).