Background of Script
If you have a web site and a blog site, chances are that you have two separate Google sitemaps that list the URLs within each site.
I use WordPress for my blog and PHP for my web site. There are many tools/plugins to create these Google sitemaps separately, and this is where the issues lies, and the need for this script.
This means that I have to maintain two Google sitemaps within my domain and there is no easy way (i.e. a tool) to generate a proper sitemap for all the pages within my sites. I use the Google Sitemaps Generator for WordPress plugin, but use another on-line sitemap generator for my website.
What the Script does
If you do have two Google sitemaps (contained and managed within the same domain and hosted on the same server), then I have enhanced a PHP script to read these two Google sitemaps, extract the URLs and then parses and appends these links into a file (called urllist.txt) that is read by Yahoo, MSN and Windows Live search engine bots.
This helps Yahoo, MSN and Windows Live Search search engine bots to find and index your site pages and aids Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) as they can find your page URLs more easily.
For my site, I have two Google XML sitemaps:
- sitemap.xml (for my web site)
- sitemap-blog.xml (for my blog site)
This script extracts the URLs from both of my Google sitemap files, and creates my urllist.txt file.
During execution, all configuration values, extracted URLs and status messages are displayed in your browser when you execute this script.
An example of this script’s browser output can be seen in my screen text export.
This enhanced script was based upon, and modified, from iELLIOTT’s Google 2 Yahoo Sitemap Convertor script; and the modified script by Miles Evans.
The script was written using PHP/4.4.1 and only tested on Apache/1.3.33 operating system platform.
You are free to download, review, use and modify this PHP script as you so desire.
Installation & Configuration
To install and configure this script, please refer to the README.txt file that is included in the zip file.
If you find any bugs in this script, then please add a comment to this page and I will investigate the issue.
Version History
Release Date Version Description
28/09/06 v0.1 - Initial Release (script originally exported to two files: urllist.txt and yahoo.txt)
02/11/06 v1.0 - Removed the outputting of the yahoo.txt file, as Yahoo now uses the urllist.txt file.
Download the Google to Yahoo MSN Sitemaps Creator Tool v1.0
Also included in this zip file is a text file explaining the use of Yahoo’s ApplicationID and Site Explorer tools to enable you to create an easy process of informing Yahoo every time you update your urllist.txt file.
This process involves only three steps to create a browser short-cut that sends an update notification request informing Yahoo of your new web pages.
Showing your Appreciation
If you are 100% satisfied with this script, then please put a trackback to this page from your blog site, or leave a nice comment.
Thank you.
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