Sitemap with virtuemart frontpage home link using xmap ?

[gfxpixeldesigns]

Hello,

I have recently upgraded to virtuemart 2 and in doing so im lacking a sitemap which lists all my products and categories from virtuemart. Coming from virtuemart 1 i immediately jumped to the conclusion that xmap would do what i need but this isnt the case... It seems for xmap to see the virutemart products the virtuemart link must be the virtuemart category type, alternatively a hidden menu can be created but this results in additional urls which i do not want for seo purposes.

For instance if my site resides on mysitename.com with virtuemart frontpage set as the default menu link, i then have a hidden menu link called categories with the virtuemart category menu type which results in a working sitemap but i then have 2 urls for each and every product. mysitename.com/myproduct-detail and mysitename.com/categories/myproduct-detail would both go to the same product.

This is very bad for seo as it could be picked up as dupe and you being penalised by google so although it works i strongly advise against it.

So with that i move onto the real point/question behind opening this thread... Has anyone found a solution to an easy to use working sitemap through a component or some sort of hackery ? I understand a manual sitemap can be created quite easily through the use of export tools but i need something a potential client will be able to use. Xmap used to the job just great but not anymore ...

Any help / advice would be greatly appreciated and for the record im sure there are plenty others looking for this functionality. If anything a sitemap feature should be included with the default virtuemart / joomla install.

[jjk]

I recently tested three possible sitemap generator candidates for J2.5.8/VM2.0.x. xmap, csvi and goodrelations. While all of them are able to produce a sitemap, none of them was capable to produce what I would consider a 'good' (in terms of SEO) sitemap for my products. Meanwhile I deleted all of the sitemap extensions on my test site again. (But meanwhile all my products are listed by Google anyway) As far as I remember, xmap was too slow and didn't catch the product images. CSVI (actually it's not being developed for sitemaps, but you can use it for this) produced non-sef sitemaps and goodrelations actually is an externally hosted sitemap.

Maybe some time somebody develops a nice 'Product sitemap for VirtueMart' plugin...

[gfxpixeldesigns]

Thanks jjk just confirmed what i thought :-(. CSVI is the best solution i've found so far but its more of a manual process and something id rather keep potential clients away from for fear of them messing things up. So i guess for the time being its best to go naked, that is without a sitemap and hope for a decent plugin/component soon.

One solution i am currently looking into is using the virtuemart categories layout as the default menu link (home) in combination with metamod to control module output so theres a small ray of hope there...