WordPress Site Maps – Three Ideas
January 30th, 2010 | by Mitchell Allen |I love organizing and presenting data in pleasing formats. WordPress blogs have a wealth of database goodies that describe posts and static pages. Seeing your entire blog contents listed on one page can be a visual feast. Here, in chronological order, are three ideas to consider:
Hand-Made Site Map
When I started my first blog, I was writing on a community blog called WritingUp.com. This now defunct web site used the Drupal content management system. Although Drupal had an index for each blogger, it was ugly. I noticed that my fellow bloggers began creating special posts that had links to their earlier writing. Eventually, I gave it a shot.
I called my special post Ambient Orb Blog Index. I lovingly recreated the original, including links to any posts that still exist somewhere on the web.
As first efforts go, I thought it was okay. However, maintaining it was painful. There was no way I was going to repeat that effort on the Morpho Designs blog! That’s where WordPress extensibility comes in.
Category-based Archive
For nearly two years, I have used a custom page template written by Guilherme Zühlke O’Connor. It’s called Category-based Archive and uses PHP script to display the blog’s contents. I keep the page here:Article Time Machine.
This template is nice and minimalist. If you don’t like tinkering with WordPress files, though, you’ll have to look elsewhere.
Customizable WordPress Plugin Site Map
While logged in to my WordPress dashboard a few days ago, I noticed a link to
Table of Contents Creator. This plugin was written by Mark Beljaars. The presentation is very pleasing and there are many options. My favorite option allows me to exclude pages from the table. Check out my new Table of Contents.
TOCC is SEO-friendly, if that is important to you. Your visitors can sort the table, hide sections and read summaries. If you wish, TOCC will even make the page for you!
What do you use for your table of contents?
