The Playful Sparkle - Google Sitemap extension for OpenCart 3.x+ offers a refined XML sitemap generation solution that aligns with search engine standards and SEO best practices. This extension supports detailed customization, allowing OpenCart merchants to tailor sitemaps to include specific product pages (with images), category pages (with images), and manufacturer pages, all tagged to support complete, accurate indexing by search engines.
A key feature of the extension is its use of PHP’s XMLWriter class to generate standards-compliant XML sitemaps per the Sitemaps.org protocol. This ensures that search engines can efficiently crawl site content, aided by the <lastmod> attribute included on product and category pages. The <lastmod> attribute, which tracks the date of the most recent content update, allows search engines to prioritize updated pages, increasing the likelihood of timely indexing.
To streamline sitemap accessibility, the extension can automatically update the .htaccess file, enabling users and Google Search Console to access sitemaps using clean, SEO-friendly URLs like /en-gb/sitemap.xml instead of the default OpenCart URL format, such as index.php?route=extension/feed/ps_google_sitemap&language=en-gb. This improvement ensures compatibility with Google Search Console requirements and simplifies sitemap management.
Additionally, the extension validates the robots.txt file to verify whether the sitemap is allowed by Google. This proactive check notifies you early if adjustments to the file are needed, ensuring your sitemap is discoverable and functional for search engine indexing.
With multi-store and multi-language support, the extension allows merchants to create separate sitemaps for different store views and languages. This enables each store or language version of your site to have its own tailored sitemap, ensuring better indexing and visibility in search engines for audiences in different regions and languages.
- Customizable Sitemap: Customize the sitemap to include product pages (with images), category pages (with images), and manufacturer pages, ensuring thorough indexing.
- Standards-Compliant XML Sitemap: Generates a fully compliant XML sitemap using PHP’s XMLWriter class, following the Sitemaps.org protocol.
- Last Modified Tracking: Includes the
<lastmod>attribute for product and category pages, helping search engines track updates for timely indexing. - Compatible with Webmaster Tools: Fully compatible with commonly used webmaster tools such as Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, and Yandex Webmaster Tools.
- Compatibility: Integrates smoothly with OpenCart 3.x+, supporting a range of online store setups.
- Multi-store Support: Supports multi-store setups by default, making it easy to integrate across multiple OpenCart stores.
- Multilingual Support: Ready for international use with languages including Čeština (cs-cz), Deutsch (de-de), English (GB) (en-gb), English (US) (en-us), Español (es-es), Français (fr-fr), Magyar (hu-hu), Italiano (it-it), Русский (ru-ru), Slovenčina (sk-sk), and فارسی (fa-ir).
- Download the latest version from this repository.
- Log in to your OpenCart admin panel.
- Navigate to
Extensions > Installer. - Click the
Uploadbutton and upload theps_google_sitemap.ocmod.zipfile. - Navigate to
Extensions > Extensionsand selectFeedsfrom theChoose the extension typedropdown list. - Locate the extension in the
Feedslist and click theInstallbutton. - Click the
Editbutton, configure the extension parameters, and click theSavebutton to save your settings.
For assistance or inquiries related to this extension, please open an issue on this repository or contact us via email at support@playfulsparkle.com.
This project is distributed under the GPL-3.0 license. Please refer to the LICENSE file for further details.
We encourage contributions from the community. To contribute, please fork the repository and submit a pull request with your proposed changes.