andreyberestov

Lightweight Sitemap Generator is a minimal WordPress plugin that creates a valid XML sitemap for search engines (Google, Yandex and others), fully compliant with <a href="https://www.sitemaps.org/" rel="nofollow ugc">sitemaps.org</a>.
Main features:
<ul>
<li>Generates a valid <code>sitemap.xml</code> (or wp-sitemap.xml) with proper <code><loc></code> and <code><lastmod></code> tags (ISO-8601 UTC format)</li>
<li>Unified structure for posts, pages, products, built-in taxonomies, and detected public third-party taxonomies</li>
<li>Global chronological order (newer → older)</li>
<li>Automatic duplicate prevention across all sources</li>
<li>Two modes:
<ul>
<li>File mode — creates a static sitemap in the site root (minimal server load)</li>
<li>Dynamic mode — builds sitemap on-the-fly (always up to date, cached with TTL)</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Clean and minimal settings page in WP Admin:
<ul>
<li>Enable or disable posts, pages, categories, tags, authors, archives</li>
<li>Supports WooCommerce products, DW Q&A, and all detected custom post types/taxonomies</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Homepage is always included automatically</li>
<li>Flexible <code><lastmod></code> for homepage:
<ul>
<li>Smart — based on the most recently updated content</li>
<li>Conservative — static front-page date</li>
<li>Fast — current time on each generation</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Optional sitemap splitting (up to 50 000 URLs per part) with automatic sitemap index</li>
<li>Google News: Optional separate <code>news-sitemap.xml</code> for Google News with 48-hour news window and 1,000 URLs per file</li>
<li>Two independent generation engines — optimized for both regular and ultra-large sites</li>
<li>Safe caching with TTL and diagnostic comments (HIT / MISS / timing)</li>
<li>HTTP header support:
<ul>
<li>Sends correct Content-Type, Last-Modified, Cache-Control, and ETag headers</li>
<li>Optional X-Robots-Tag: noindex, follow header for sitemap requests</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Security and reliability:
<ul>
<li>Capability checks and nonce validation</li>
<li>Strict sanitization and option whitelisting</li>
<li>File operations via <code>WP_Filesystem</code> (with safe fallback)</li>
<li>No external requests</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<h3>Credits</h3>
Created by Andrey Berestov

Lightweight Sitemap Generator

XML sitemap generator for WordPress with file or dynamic mode. Supports all public post types and taxonomies. Optional Google News sitemap.

Webbjocke

<h4>A WordPress sitemap plugin</h4>
Simple Wp Sitemap is a sitemap plugin that generates both an xml and an html sitemap to your site dynamically. These two are updated automatically everytime someone’s visiting them. Which means they’re always up to date and that you only have to install and activate the plugin once, and it will just work for you without you ever having to worry.
Reason the sitemaps are generated dynamically instead of being created as actual files as they were in the beginning, is because it’s much faster and more solid. No problems with having to access, create and delete files, instead they’re just presented when needed to. It’s now suddenly as lightweight, simple and fast as one can expect!
Also supports the option to add pages to the sitemaps that aren’t part of your original WordPress site. For instance if you create a little html file and upload to your server and want it to be included in them, it’s easily done. You can also block pages that you don’t want to be included, and much more.
<h4>What it does</h4>
So what the plugin actually does is making one xml sitemap and one html sitemap available directly on your site. These aren’t actually real files that can be found in a folder or anything, instead they get generated when visited and can be found at like yourpage.com/sitemap.xml and yourpage.com/sitemap.html.
And yes, of course the sitemaps are mobile friendly. They also work well with caching plugins 🙂
<h4>Multisite and multilanguage compatible</h4>
The sitemaps are multisite and multilanguage compatible. Every site gets their own sitemap, and all multilanguage urls are included in them!

Simple Wp Sitemap

This is my favorite XML sitemap plugin. It's very straightforward to use, and simple in design and execution, but it gets the job done and doesn't blast you with credits or advertising while it does so. 

The developer is very good about responding to support threads, and to date is one of the few developers of XML sitemap plugins that has kept pace with the current version(s) of WordPress.

Most XML sitemap plugins require that you enter a comma-separated string of post IDs in order to exclude pages and posts from the sitemap. This plugin takes a different approach, and uses the actual URLs. While there may be a problem with that approach if one changes permalink structure, it's much easier to implement than using the post IDs. 

The only thing that keeps me from giving this plugin five stars is possibly not due to this plugin at all: I have to disable caching of the sitemap.xml file in WP Super Cache, or the output of sitemap.xml is invalid and doesn't display correctly in a browser. It would be nice to be able to cache the sitemap.xml file on larger sites. I've only found one other XML sitemap plugin that didn't conflict with WP Super Cache in the same way; most of them do.

Love It!

An easy sitemap plugin that adds both an xml and an html sitemap to your site, which updates and maintains themselves so you don't have to!

Lightweight Sitemap Generator vs Simple Wp Sitemap