Disable WP Sitemaps

Does one thing: disables the automatic WP Sitemaps.

Activate this plugin to disable the auto-generated WP Sitemaps (added in WordPress v5.5).

Features

• Lightweight – only one line of code.
• Simple to use – activate and done.
• No settings to worry about.
• Easy peasy.

Also stops WordPress from adding a sitemap rule to the virtual robots.txt file.

Why is this useful?

Because there are plugins that already implement sitemaps, and those plugins are used by a LOT of people. So all those sites with existing sitemaps will have TWO sets of sitemaps when upgraded to WP 5.5. Duplicate sets of sitemaps are discouraged as they may confuse the search engines. You don’t want to confuse the search engines, do you. So with WP 5.5 and beyond, you can either remove your existing sitemap solution or install this plugin to disable the WP-generated sitemap. Or maybe you have a site that does not need a sitemap. Or maybe you just don’t want a sitemap, that’s your business pal. Whatever the reason, this plugin will do the job with a click.

More infos

You can check your WP Sitemap located at /wp-sitemap.xml

Your sitemap should look similar to this.

For more information about the new WP Sitemaps functionality:

• New XML Sitemaps Functionality in WordPress 5.5
• About the New WP Sitemaps and How to Disable

Privacy

This plugin does not collect or store any user data. It does not set any cookies, and it does not connect to any third-party locations. Thus, this plugin does not affect user privacy in any way.

Disable WP Sitemaps is developed and maintained by Jeff Starr, 15-year WordPress developer and book author.

Support development

I develop and maintain this free plugin with love for the WordPress community. To show support, you can make a donation or purchase one of my books:

• The Tao of WordPress
• Digging into WordPress
• .htaccess made easy
• WordPress Themes In Depth
• Wizard’s SQL Recipes for WordPress

And/or purchase one of my premium WordPress plugins:

• BBQ Pro – Blazing fast WordPress firewall
• Blackhole Pro – Automatically block bad bots
• Banhammer Pro – Monitor traffic and ban the bad guys
• GA Google Analytics Pro – Connect WordPress to Google Analytics
• Head Meta Pro – Ultimate Meta Tags for WordPress
• Simple Ajax Chat Pro – Unlimited chat rooms
• USP Pro – Unlimited front-end forms

Links, tweets and likes also appreciated. Thank you! 🙂

Installing the plugin

Activate like any other plugin and done. There are no settings, works automatically.

More info on installing WP plugins

Uninstalling

To uninstall/remove the plugin, visit the Plugins screen, deactivate and delete the plugin. This plugin makes no changes to the WP database.

If you like Disable WP Sitemaps, please take a moment to give a 5-star rating. It helps to keep the plugin going strong, and is greatly appreciated.

1.8.6 (2025/11/13)

• Tests on WordPress 6.9

Full changelog @ https://plugin-planet.com/wp/changelog/disable-wp-sitemaps.txt