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An XML Sitemap can be useful for optimising your site with Google, particularly if you make use of their Webmaster Tools. Jekyll doesn’t come with one out-of-the-box, but it is easy to add one. There’s probably a plugin out there which will automate things, but I just used a normal Jekyll-generated file for mine, based on code found on Robert Birnie’s site.

The only modification I made was to exclude feed.xml from the sitemap. Because this is auto-generated by a plugin I couldn’t add any front-matter to a file to exclude it in the same way as other files.

Create a file called sitemap.xml in the root of your site, and paste the following code into it:

---
layout: null
sitemap:
  exclude: 'yes'
---
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  {% for post in site.posts %}
    {% unless post.published == false %}
    <url>
      <loc>{{ site.url }}{{ post.url }}</loc>
      {% if post.sitemap.lastmod %}
        <lastmod>{{ post.sitemap.lastmod | date: "%Y-%m-%d" }}</lastmod>
      {% elsif post.date %}
        <lastmod>{{ post.date | date_to_xmlschema }}</lastmod>
      {% else %}
        <lastmod>{{ site.time | date_to_xmlschema }}</lastmod>
      {% endif %}
      {% if post.sitemap.changefreq %}
        <changefreq>{{ post.sitemap.changefreq }}</changefreq>
      {% else %}
        <changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
      {% endif %}
      {% if post.sitemap.priority %}
        <priority>{{ post.sitemap.priority }}</priority>
      {% else %}
        <priority>0.5</priority>
      {% endif %}
    </url>
    {% endunless %}
  {% endfor %}
  {% for page in site.pages %}
    {% unless page.sitemap.exclude == "yes" or page.url=="/feed.xml" %}
    <url>
      <loc>{{ site.url }}{{ page.url | remove: "index.html" }}</loc>
      {% if page.sitemap.lastmod %}
        <lastmod>{{ page.sitemap.lastmod | date: "%Y-%m-%d" }}</lastmod>
      {% elsif page.date %}
        <lastmod>{{ page.date | date_to_xmlschema }}</lastmod>
      {% else %}
        <lastmod>{{ site.time | date_to_xmlschema }}</lastmod>
      {% endif %}
      {% if page.sitemap.changefreq %}
        <changefreq>{{ page.sitemap.changefreq }}</changefreq>
      {% else %}
        <changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
      {% endif %}
      {% if page.sitemap.priority %}
        <priority>{{ page.sitemap.priority }}</priority>
      {% else %}
        <priority>0.3</priority>
      {% endif %}
    </url>
    {% endunless %}
  {% endfor %}
</urlset>

If you want fine-control over what appears in the sitemap, you can use any of the following front-matter variables.

sitemap:
  lastmod: 2014-01-23
  priority: 0.7
  changefreq: 'monthly'
  exclude: 'yes'

As an example, I use this in my feed.json template to exclude the generated file from the sitemap:

sitemap:
  exclude: 'yes'

And this in my index/archive pages for a daily change frequency:

sitemap:
  changefreq: 'daily'

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