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| Click on the following link for the German version of this page. | |||
This program scans files in a specified folder (on your local hard disk), and files in selected subfolders, and generates either (i) an HTML sitemap to assist readers of your website to navigate or (ii) an XML Sitemap to assist search engines to index your website. For XML Sitemaps, automatic setting of the change-frequency and priority tags is supported. For a sample screenshot click here.
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As websites became larger in the late 1990s a need was felt for a way to inform a reader of what web pages were present on the website, and to allow a reader to access them without going through a series of links, so HTML sitemaps were devised. An HTML sitemap (with a small 's' to distinguish them from XML Sitemaps) is an HTML file which lists the web pages on a site, usually by their titles (with clicking on a title normally taking you to the page itself). An example is the sitemap for this website.
The original method used by search engines to index a website was to start at the home page and follow links to other pages on the site. But as websites became more complex not all files on the site could be reached in this way, and this motivated search engine providers to devise a way to help search engines to index websites. The result was the Sitemap protocol (introduced by Google in 2005).
A Sitemap (with a capital 'S' to distinguish them from HTML sitemaps) is an XML file which allows a website manager to provide information about the files on a website, most importantly, the URL for each file and the date of its last modification (and also how often the file changes and how important it is in relation to other files on the website). A Sitemap is placed on a website with a pointer to it from a robots.txt file so that a search engine, visiting that website, knows where to find it.
If a website has many files then it is very tedious to create a Sitemap manually (and to edit it for changes), so Sitemap generator programs have been developed. These are of two kinds: (i) Those which request the home page of a website (usually index.html) on the webserver and follow the links. (ii) Those which begin with the top folder of a website on the website manager's local hard disk and process all files in that folder and in all subfolders — perhaps with the exception of files which (in some way) have been excluded.
Sitemap generators of the first kind use the original method of indexing and thus are subject to the problems that Sitemaps were devised to overcome. Hermetic Sitemap Builder is a Sitemap generator of the second kind, and supports exclusion of files that you don't want included in the Sitemap.
Hermetic Sitemap Builder can generate both XML Sitemaps and HTML sitemaps. For a given website the two kinds will usually use the same specifications (by the website manager) for exclusion of unwanted files and folders, and so will list the same files. In some cases, however, it is desirable that they be somewhat different, and this program supports ways to achieve this, as explained in the user manual.
A search using Google or some other search engine returns mostly HTML files (those with file type htm and html), but several other file types are possible. Google states that it can index the following file types (in addition to HTML files):
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A file type which may be returned, but which is not included in the list above, is php. A php file may be included in Google's index if some indexed HTML file links to it.
Types of files which may be returned in a Google search may be called Google file types. Hermetic Sitemap Builder includes only Google file types in XML Sitemaps (and only HTML files in HTML sitemaps).
Trial version: A trial version of Hermetic Sitemap Builder can be downloaded from this website for the purpose of evaluation of the software. Click on the following link for further information:
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Refund: A refund will be provided promptly up to 30 days after purchase if the software does not perform satisfactorily.
Updates: Purchasers of a user license for this software are entitled to an update to any later version at no additional cost.
| Hermetic Sitemap Builder User Manual |
| Hermetic Systems Home Page |