Settings Reference
Every setting in Super Speedy Sitemaps lives on one screen, Super Speedy > Sitemaps, split across four tabs: XML Sitemaps, Extensions, Advanced Options and Sitemap Log. This reference walks through each tab section by section, in the order the screen shows them, with each setting’s default and when to change it.
On a multisite network, some settings are visible only to the network super admin on the main site, and apply to every site in the network. They are marked super admin below and listed together at the end.
On a new install, the defaults produce a working sitemap index at /sitemap.xml. The changes most sites make are: untick Enable pinging, turn on Enable caching once the contents are settled, and exclude any pages that should not be indexed.
XML Sitemaps tab
Generated Sitemaps
A table of every sitemap generated so far, with the time each was last generated. Each row has two buttons: one opens the sitemap, the other regenerates it. Regenerating marks every cached sitemap on the site as out of date, so each one is rebuilt on its next request. Before anything has been generated, the table is replaced by a click to generate your Sitemap Index button.
Sitemaps to generate
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Enable following sitemaps > Site Address | On | A sitemap listing the home page. On the main site of a sub-folder multisite network, it lists every site’s address |
| Enable following sitemaps > Taxonomy (including custom taxonomies) | On | One sitemap per enabled taxonomy, listing its term archive pages |
| Enable following sitemaps > Date archives | Off | Monthly and yearly archive pages |
| Enable following sitemaps > Author archives | Off | One URL per author archive |
| Enable following sitemaps > External (non-WordPress) pages. | Off | URLs added by hand under External pages |
| Enable following post types | All ticked | One sitemap per public post type |
| Enable following taxonomies | All ticked except Tag | Which taxonomies get a sitemap, when Taxonomy is on |
A post type or taxonomy checkbox is greyed out when The SEO Framework or Super Speedy Filters decides whether it is indexable. The help icon beside it names the plugin and links to the setting that decides it. Choosing What Goes in Your Sitemaps covers these choices in depth.
Exclude items
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Exclude posts | None | Pick a post type, then search for and select individual posts to leave out of its sitemap |
| Exclude terms | None | Pick a taxonomy, then select individual terms to leave out of its sitemap |
| Exclude posts by terms | Off | Also exclude posts that belong to excluded terms. A post in several terms is excluded if any one of them is excluded |
| Exclude out-of-stock products | Off | Shown with WooCommerce active. Leaves out-of-stock products out of the product sitemap. Products with Hidden catalogue visibility are always left out |
Use exclusions for pages that exist but should not be indexed, such as thank-you pages and account pages. URLs that Yoast SEO, Rank Math, All in One SEO or The SEO Framework mark noindex are left out without being listed here; see SEO Plugin Integrations.
External pages
Add new page opens a form for a URL outside WordPress, with its change frequency, priority and last-modified date. Show/Hide external pages lists the pages added so far. They appear in the External pages sitemap when External (non-WordPress) pages. is ticked above. See External Pages.
Other sitemap generators
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| WordPress core sitemap | Off | Switch off the WordPress core sitemap. Removes /wp-sitemap.xml and its line in robots.txt, so search engines are given only this plugin’s sitemap |
When another plugin is also publishing a sitemap, a warning at the top of the tab names it, gives its sitemap address and says where to switch it off. See Running Alongside Other Sitemap Generators.
Item limits
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Global limit | 5000 | The most URLs in one sitemap file. Maximum 50,000 |
| Split post-based sitemaps | On | Splits a post type’s sitemap into post_part1.xml, post_part2.xml and so on when it passes the limit |
| Split limit | 0 | A separate per-file limit for split post sitemaps. 0 uses the Global limit |
Lower the Global limit if a sitemap shows a white page or times out. There is no benefit to raising it. See Large Sites and Performance.
Default values
These fill in <changefreq> and <priority> only when the plugin cannot calculate them.
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Default change frequency | Daily | Change frequency used when none can be calculated |
| Default priority | 1.0 | Priority used when none can be calculated |
| Minimum priority | 0.1 | The lowest priority any URL is given |
Google ignores both tags, so most sites leave these alone.
Ping search engines
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Enable pinging | On | Pings search engines with the sitemap index when a post is published |
| Search engines to ping | Google and Bing | Which engines to ping |
| Enable following post types | All ticked | Which post types trigger a ping when published |
| Ping limit | 100 | Pings per search engine per day |
Google and Bing have retired their sitemap ping endpoints, so untick Enable pinging. See Frequently Asked Questions.
Look and Feel
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Make sitemaps look pretty | Off | Adds an XSLT stylesheet so a sitemap opened in a browser shows as a readable table. Search engines ignore it. Not applied to the Google News sitemap |
| Custom XSLT stylesheet URL | Empty | An absolute URL to your own stylesheet. An index stylesheet must sit beside it: my-stylesheet.xsl and my-stylesheetindex.xsl |
| Enable credit | On | Adds a comment naming the plugin to the end of each sitemap |
Save Changes saves the tab. Save Changes and Flush Cache saves and then deletes every cached sitemap, so the next request for each one is rebuilt with the new settings. Flush Cache deletes the cached sitemaps without saving. The two flush buttons appear on the XML Sitemaps and Advanced Options tabs; on multisite, only for the super admin on the main site.
Extensions tab
Both extensions are off by default. Google News and Image Sitemaps explains when to use them.
Google Image Sitemap
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Enable extension | Off | Adds an <image:image> entry for each item’s featured image in the post-based sitemaps |
| Enable for following post types | None ticked | Which post types get image entries. Only post types that support featured images can be ticked |
Image entries add lookups to every URL. If sitemaps slow down after enabling this, switch it off first.
Google News Sitemap
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Enable extension | Off | Adds post_google_news.xml to the sitemap index |
| Enable pinging | Off | Pings search engines when a news article is published. Leave it off |
Under Sitemap Contents:
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| News name | Empty, which uses your Site Title | The publication name sent to Google News |
| News language | English | The language of your articles |
| News age | 2 day(s) | Articles older than this are left out. 0 removes the limit and is not recommended |
| News post type | Post | The post type your news articles use |
| News taxonomy | Category | The taxonomy that marks which articles are news. Avoid a tag-like taxonomy for performance |
| News terms and genres | Include | Include or Exclude the selected terms. Show/Hide selected terms lists the terms with a Google News genre for each |
| Enable multi-term support | Off | For posts assigned to more than one term |
| Enable keywords support | Off | Adds keywords to each news entry. When ticked, Keyword source picks the taxonomy they come from, defaulting to the selected News taxonomy |
Advanced Options tab
Formatting
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Use GMT for Last Modified date | On | Writes <lastmod> dates in GMT. Untick to use the timezone set in Settings > General |
| Compress sitemaps | Off | Gzips each sitemap, making it around 70% smaller. Super admin |
Leave Compress sitemaps off unless you know your server does not compress XML. Most servers do, and compressing twice causes a “Content Encoding Error”. See Troubleshooting.
Robots.txt
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Enable robots.txt support | On | Adds a Sitemap: line for the sitemap index to the robots.txt WordPress generates |
| Enable multisite robots.txt support | Off | Shown on multisite only. Adds every site’s sitemap index to the main site’s robots.txt. Super admin |
Nothing is added when Settings > Reading > Search engine visibility asks search engines not to index the site, or when a physical robots.txt file in the web root replaces the one WordPress generates. Multisite Networks explains how robots.txt works on a network.
Sitemap Cache
The whole section is super admin on multisite.
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Enable caching | Off | Saves each generated sitemap to disk and serves it from there until it expires |
| Enable auto cache re-generation | On | Rebuilds an expired sitemap on its next request. If unticked, expired files keep being served until you flush the cache |
| Cache expiry time | 1 hour(s) | How long a cached sitemap is served before it is rebuilt. The unit can be seconds, minutes, hours or days |
| Cache directory | wp-content/uploads/super-speedy-sitemaps | Where cached sitemaps are stored. Enter an absolute path, or a path from the WordPress root such as wp-content/sitemap-cache; the folder is created if it does not exist and must be writable. The SSSM_GXS_CACHE_DIR constant in wp-config.php takes precedence, and a developer’s sssm_gxs_cache_dir filter has the last word; with either in place the field shows OVERRIDDEN with the path in use. |
| When a sitemap cannot be generated | Serve last good copy | What crawlers get when a sitemap build fails part-way |
Turn caching on once your sitemap contents are settled. While you are still changing settings, leave it off or use Save Changes and Flush Cache after each change.
When a sitemap cannot be generated has two options:
- Serve last good copy serves the cached sitemap from the last successful build. If there is no cached copy, it responds
503 Service Unavailablewith aRetry-Afterheader. - Respond 503 always responds
503 Service Unavailablewith aRetry-Afterheader.
A build fails when the database drops a query part-way through, or PHP runs out of memory or time, for example while the server is overloaded. A half-built sitemap is never served or cached. A 503 tells search engines to come back later rather than that the URLs have gone. The last good copy needs Enable caching on, because it is the cached file. Every failure is recorded in the Sitemap Log. See Troubleshooting.
Sitemap modules
The whole section is super admin on multisite.
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Database query limit | 1000 | How many rows each database query fetches while a sitemap is built. Lower it only on a host that runs out of memory |
| Custom module directory | Empty | An absolute path to a folder of your own sitemap modules. A module with the same file name as a built-in one replaces it |
Custom modules are covered in the Developer Reference.
Debugging
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Enable build stats | On | Adds a comment to the end of each sitemap with its build time, memory usage, query count and URL count |
| Enable message log | On | Records each generation in the Sitemap Log. With it off, nothing is logged and the Sitemap Log tab shows no table. Super admin |
| Enable debugging mode | Off | Uses no cache and respects WP_DEBUG. For developing modules. Super admin |
| Enable extra debugging mode | Off | Sends no headers and no compression. For diagnosing a “Content Encoding Error”. Super admin |
Switch both debugging modes off again on a live site: with debugging mode on, every request rebuilds the sitemap.
Sitemap Log tab
The generation log is available since 1.14.0.
The Generation Log table has one row each time a sitemap is generated or fails to generate, newest first. Serving a sitemap from the cache is not logged. The last 1,000 entries are kept, in a database table of the site’s own, and the screen shows the most recent 200.
| Column | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Time | When the build ran, in the site’s timezone |
| Sitemap | The sitemap, linked |
| Result | Generated, new sitemap; No items, 404; Failed, last good copy; or Failed, 503, retry later |
| URLs | How many URLs the sitemap lists |
| Size and Gzipped | The sitemap’s size in KB, and the size of the cached gzipped file when caching is on |
| Time taken, Queries, Peak memory | What the build cost |
| Requested by | Visitor or crawler, Logged-in user or Regenerate button |
| Details | Messages from the build, including the full error when a build failed |
All entries and Problems only switch between the full log and only the rows that did not end in Generated. Problems only shows the number of such rows in brackets.
Clear Log empties the log. It appears when logging is on and the log has entries.
Super admin settings on multisite
On a multisite network, these settings appear only to the network super admin on the main site’s Super Speedy > Sitemaps screen. The values saved there apply to every site in the network, and site administrators do not see them:
- Compress sitemaps
- Enable multisite robots.txt support
- Enable caching, Enable auto cache re-generation, Cache expiry time, Cache directory and When a sitemap cannot be generated
- Database query limit and Custom module directory
- Enable message log, Enable debugging mode and Enable extra debugging mode
- The Flush Cache and Save Changes and Flush Cache buttons
Every other setting is per site: each site’s administrators choose that site’s sitemap contents, exclusions, limits and extensions. Multisite Networks covers the rest of what a network admin needs to know.
Further reading
Written for Super Speedy Sitemaps 1.16.0.
Comments