Easy Joomla 1.5

This tutorial shows you how to add Xmap to your Joomla 1.5 website so that search engines like Google and Yahoo can more intelligently crawl your site.


Xmap is a popular native non-commercial extension for Joomla 1.5 based on the popular Joomap component. Xmap enables webmasters to create a sitemap of any Joomla 1.5 website using the structure of the menus.

There are 2 main reasons for creating a sitemap.

You can add your sitemap to your Google account in Google Sitemap to provide it with additional information about your site. The objective is clearly, to make your website Google-friendly so it will improve search engine optimization of your website.

This tutorial has shown you how to add Xmap to your Joomla 1.5 website. Xmap is an extension for Joomla 1.5 which when enable produces a detailed map of your site which visitors can use to navigate your site.

In this tutorial Joomla 1.5 webmasters will learn how to add JCrawler - a very simple sitemap to their website. Creating a sitemap enables you to submit a directory of your URL links to search engines like Google and Yahoo thereby improving the indexing of your site and encouraging site traffic. For the purposes of this tutorial we will be using a simple native sitemap generator called JCrawler which makes the process of creating a sitemap very easy. This tutorial will be of help to all users of Joomlas 1.5 but is particularly targeted at novices and assumes very little technical knowledge.

JCrawler is an excellent open source, non-commercial Joomla 1.5 extension that is easy to use. It is a sitemap generator that creates the sitemap on the fly and requires no plugins. JCrawler crawls your site and stores all the URL links it finds in an XML file. Once the sitemap is created JCrawler then gives you the option of submitting the XML file to 5 different search engines: Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask.com and Moreover. The whole process from installation to submission takes about 5-7 minutes to complete.

Steps to Add JCrawler to Joomla 1.5

1. Download JCrawler to your computer.

2. Login to your the Admin of your site.

3. Navigate to Extensions > Install/Uninstall

4. Click on the Browse button to locate the file named com_jcrawler.zip you have downloaded to your computer. Once the file is located click on the Upload & Install button to upload it your server.



5. If there are no issues you should receive a message to inform you that JCrawler has been successfully installed. If not check that fopen or Curl are enabled on the server where your site is hosted. If you are using an earlier version of Joomla than 1.5.8 there may be other issues. You can access support at http://www.pixelschieber.ch/jcrawler

6. Click on the Components menu link and you will see JCrawler listed in the dropdown menu.



7. Select JCrawler and you will be taken to the JCrawler page. There you will find a list of options for adapting JCrawler to your site. We are going to stick with the default options at this stage. These can be tweaked later if necessary. However you may wish to check the option to have the robots.txt file interface with your sitemap.



8. Once you have made any changes click on the Start button at the bottom of the JCrawler page. JCrawler will automatically populate your Sitemap with all the URL links it finds for your site. This may taken a few minutes depending on the number of links so be patient while your Sitemap is being created. If all is well JCrawler takes you to a success screen like the one below.



9. On this JCrawler Success page you have the option to View your Sitemap by selecting the link on the righthand side. When you select this link you will be taken to a page resembling the one below via a new window in your browser. When you have finished looking at your new Sitemap close the window and return to the JCrawler Success page.



10. JCrawler will automatically submit your newly created Sitemap to 5 different popular search engines: Google, Yahoo, Moreover, Ask.com and MSN. Please refer to the picture in Step 8. You will see these search engines ticked on the lefthand side of the JCrawler Success page. To have JCrawler do these submissions for you simply click on the Submit button.

You have now successfully created a Sitemap and submitted it to various search engines. It may take some time before the sitemap is crawled by the search engines but once this happens you are likely to see a substantial increase in site traffic. In the meantime if you wish to check what pages a particular search engine has indexed you can do so by entering the operator (prefix) site: followed by the URL address of your site into the search engine searchbox. For instance to check how Google has indexed my site I would enter the following into the Google searchbox.

site:easyjoomla.blogspot.com

If you receive a message from Google like this:

Your search - site:easyjoomla.blogspot.com - did not match any documents

don't despair as it probably just means your site has yet to be indexed.

Troubleshooting
If you have redirects on your URLs to improve search engine friendliness you may find that Google will report sitemap errors when a sitemap.xml has been created using JCrawler.

If for any reason JCrawler does not work you may have to consider another sitemap generator. Check out the sitemaps on this site for other sitemap generator possibilities. For a list of sitemap generators visit http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/site-management/site-map

Another option is to create your sitemap.xml file manually. For general guidelines on sitemaps please refer to sitemaps.org. Manual sitemaps can be generated using a text editor like Notepad. Links can be pasted into the sitemap.xml file and then manually uploaded to your server via FTP. You will need to ensure the file is writeable so change the permissions to 644.


This tutorial answers the question: how to add a sitemap to Joomla 1.5 by providing step by step instructions for installing and using JCrawler on a Joomla 1.5 website.

In this tutorial we discuss the benefits of creating a sitemap for a Joomla 1.5 website so that it can be submitted to search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN.






This tutorial has focussed on the benefits of creating a sitemap for a Joomla 1.5 website so that it can be submitted to search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN.

At Easy Joomla 1.5 the focus is on delivering tutorials, tricks, tips and tweaks to help webmasters get the most out of Joomla 1.5. We have deliberately chosen easy ways to customise your site with very little technical knowledge. We walk you through the process with easy to understand tutorials which are aimed at beginner webmasters although are useful for anyone wanting to customise their Joomla 1.5 website.

Over the coming weeks we will be posting tutorials on customising layout, search engine optimisation - SEO, and a variety of extensions that will add functionality to your Joomla 1.5 website. We hope you will be a regular visitor to this site and we look forward to furnishing you with timely and useful information.

Find Joomla 1.5 tutorials, tips, tricks, tweaks and secrets to customise your website at Easy Joomla 1.5