How to Create a Sitemap.xml for Magento 2.x

You can find detailed guidelines for creating a sitemap.xml for Magento 2.x versions in this support documentation article.

Enabling sitemap.xml in Magento 2

Configure Magento 2 to Create Sitemaps

To enable sitemaps inside Magento, log in to your admin
Make sure your crontab is working properly
Ensure all storefronts you want to generate sitemaps for are configured
Navigate to Stores -> Settings -> Configuration -> Catalog -> XML Sitemap:

In the dropdown menu, adjust the settings for Category Options, Product Options and CMS Pages Options to your needs.

Now open the Generation Settings dropdown and select:

Enabled: Yes
Start Time: Insert some time after 00:00 (Don’t choose exactly 00:00 as many other jobs are scheduled around midnight too)
Frequency: Choose Daily, or if you have many product changes during the day, select Hourly (Hourly is quite heavy on your databases, so don’t do this on Falcon XS, S, and M plans)
Error Email Recipient: The error collector email address of the Magento partner that maintains the website
Error Email Sender: A valid return path that is used for your Magento store (If set), or otherwise a sender that is not blocked by your spam filter
Error Email Template: You can leave this at ‘Use System Value’

After setting the Generation Settings, open the dropdown for Search Engine Submission Settings, set Enable Submission to Robots.txt to Yes and save your changes by clicking the big red Save Config button at the right side of the top of the page.

Magento is now ready and configured to generate sitemaps. Now we should change the settings for your storefront to create one.

Configuring a Single Sitemap for All Storefronts

If you want to share a sitemap between storefronts, you need to set up a location where the file is saved and adjust our Nginx config, so the file is publicly accessible.

Let’s start with defining a sitemap.xml for your webshop:

Create a directory to store our sitemap: mkdir -p /data/web/magento2/pub/sitemaps
In the Magento admin, select Marketing -> Seo & Search -> Sitemap
Click the big red button on the upper right to add a new sitemap.

Now fill in the required information:

Filename: sitemap.xml
Path: /sitemaps/
In case you have multiple store views, select the corresponding store view
Select Save & Generate

If all goes well, a sitemap.xml file is generated as /data/web/magento2/pub/sitemaps/sitemap.xml

Now scroll to Configuring Nginx to use one sitemap for all storefronts to add the required Nginx configuration.

Configure a Sitemap for Each Storefront

Some additional configuration is required if you want to serve a different sitemap.xml for each store view. We assume you have already finished the step Configure Magento 2 to Create Sitemaps, so if you haven’t done this already, do that step first.

Let’s get started:

Create a directory to store each sitemap: mkdir -p /data/web/magento2/pub/sitemaps
Make sure there is no sitemap in /data/web/public/sitemap.xml to avoid an incorrect sitemap being served (change the location of the sitemap.xml in Magento from /sitemap.xml to /sitemaps/sitemap_$storecode.xml where $storecode is the code of your storefront)
In the Magento admin, select Marketing -> Seo & Search -> Sitemap
Click the big red button on the upper right to add a new sitemap.

For each store view, fill in the information:

Filename: Create a sitemap with the known naming convention sitemap_$storecode.xml. IE: If your store code is shop_nl, then use the filename sitemap_shop_nl.xml
Path: /sitemaps/
Store View: Select the store view (IE: shop_nl)
Select Save & Generate

If all went well, a sitemap.xml file is generated as /data/web/magento2/pub/sitemaps/sitemap_shop_nl.xml

Now you can use Configure Nginx to use a sitemap.xml per storefront to add the required Nginx configuration.

Nginx Configuration

Configuring Nginx to Use One Sitemap for All Storefronts

Because the /data/web/magento2/pub/sitemaps directory where the sitemap is stored is not within the /data/web/public directory, some additional configuration in Nginx is required to make your sitemap.xml accessible from the web. To do this, use the Nginx alias functionality to create an alias to a path outside the public webroot.

First, log in to your Hypernode using SSH, and open the file /data/web/nginx/server.sitemap with your favorite editor. Now create the following snippet:

location /sitemap.xml {
    alias /data/web/magento2/pub/sitemaps/sitemap.xml;
}

Now test your sitemap by requesting and verifying whether the right sitemap is served:

curl -v https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml

Configure Nginx to Use a Sitemap.xml per Storefront

To configure multiple sitemaps, you need to add some configuration. First, log in to your Hypernode using SSH, and open the file /data/web/nginx/server.sitemap with your favorite editor. Now create the following snippet:

location /sitemap.xml {
    alias /data/web/magento2/pub/sitemaps/sitemap_$storecode.xml;
}

Add the Sitemap Location to the Robots.txt

When you can successfully request your sitemap.xml, add it to your robots.txt:

Sitemap: http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml

You can add the sitemap manually or use the generated robots.txt Magento 2 provides. If you use the generated robots.txt, keep in mind all manual changes will be overwritten when you save your changes in the Magento admin. For configuring a robots.txt in Magento 2, have a look at this article.

Troubleshooting

We’ve seen one or two exceptional cases where creating a sitemap was extremely slow. This was caused by some queries that sometimes took 10 minutes (!) to complete. In this particular case, the solution was to disable use_index_extensions in MySQL. To do this, add SET SESSION optimizer_switch=’use_index_extensions=on’ to the MySQL initStatements in your config.php:

'default' => array(
  'host'           => 'mysqlmaster',
  'dbname'         => 'magento2_db',
  'username'       => 'app',
  'password'       => 'somepass',
  'model'          => 'mysql4',
  'initStatements' => 'SET NAMES utf8; SET SESSION optimizer_switch="use_index_extensions=on"',
  'active'         => '1',
),

Magento 2, by default, splits up the sitemap file into chunks of 10 MB. If you have lots of products, your sitemap will be split up into several files (sitemap-1-1.xml en sitemap-1-2.xml ), which are, in the current construction, not publicly accessible. We’re looking for a solution to make this possible. For now, as a workaround, change the maximum file size of your sitemap.xml to a much bigger value to include all pages in one sitemap.