Quick Start Guide

Super Speedy Sitemaps generates XML sitemaps for every public post type and taxonomy on your site, splits them into small files so they build quickly on very large catalogues, and lists them all in one sitemap index for search engines. This guide takes you from activation to a submitted sitemap in about ten minutes.

1. Install and activate

1. Download the plugin zip from your account on superspeedyplugins.com.
2. In wp-admin go to Plugins > Add New > Upload Plugin, upload the zip and click Activate.
3. Open Super Speedy in the admin menu and enter your licence key. The licence enables automatic updates.

The settings live at Super Speedy > Sitemaps, across four tabs: XML Sitemaps, Extensions, Advanced Options and Sitemap Log.

2. Look at your sitemap index

Your sitemap index is at /sitemapindex.xml on your site, for example https://example.com/sitemapindex.xml. /sitemap.xml serves the same index.

Open it in a browser. You see one <sitemap> entry per child sitemap:

• site.xml – your home page
• post.xml, page.xml and one post_<type>.xml per public custom post type, for example post_product.xml for WooCommerce products
• one taxonomy_<name>.xml per enabled taxonomy, for example taxonomy_category.xml or taxonomy_product_cat.xml

Large post types appear as post_part1.xml, post_part2.xml and so on, because each file holds 5,000 URLs by default. See Large Sites and Performance for why.

On the XML Sitemaps tab, the top section shows a log of the sitemaps generated so far. If nothing has been generated yet, it shows a click to generate your Sitemap Index button.

3. Choose what goes in

On the XML Sitemaps tab:

• Enable following sitemaps – Site Address and Taxonomy are on; Date archives, Author archives and External (non-WordPress) pages are off.
• Enable following post types – every public post type is on. Untick any you do not want indexed.
• Enable following taxonomies – every public taxonomy except Tags is on.
• Exclude items – pick individual posts or terms to leave out.

Choosing What Goes in Your Sitemaps covers each of these in detail.

4. Switch off search engine pinging

Under Ping search engines, untick Enable pinging. Google and Bing have retired their sitemap ping endpoints (Google answers 404, Bing answers 410 Gone), so a ping on every publish is a wasted outbound request. Search engines find new URLs by re-reading the sitemap you submit in step 6.

5. Turn on caching once you are happy with the contents

Go to Advanced Options > Sitemap Cache and tick Enable caching. Each sitemap is then built once, saved to wp-content/uploads/super-speedy-sitemaps/ and served from disk until it expires (one hour by default). With Enable auto cache re-generation on, expired files rebuild on the next request.

Caching is off by default so that changes show up instantly while you configure the plugin. After changing settings with caching on, click Flush Cache (or Save Changes and Flush Cache) so the next request rebuilds the files.

6. Submit the index to search engines

Submit only the index URL, never the child sitemaps one by one:

• Google Search Console – Sitemaps, enter sitemapindex.xml, Submit.
• Bing Webmaster Tools – Sitemaps, Submit sitemap, paste the full index URL.

The index is also added to your robots.txt automatically (Advanced Options > Robots.txt), which is how most other crawlers find it.

7. Decide which sitemap generator is in charge

WordPress core, Yoast SEO, Rank Math, SEOPress and All in One SEO each produce their own sitemap. Nothing breaks when they run side by side, but you should submit only one. Running Alongside Other Sitemap Generators shows how to switch the others off.

Multisite

On a multisite network, each site configures its own sitemap contents. Server-level settings (caching, compression, database query limit, logging, debugging and the custom module directory) are available to the network super admin only.

Further reading

Related products

Super Speedy SitemapsAll other sitemaps were so slow, we built our own

Written for Super Speedy Sitemaps 1.11.17.