Sitemap
The Sitemap plugin generates XML sitemap files that help search engines discover and index published content on your Brightspot site. It supports standard, news, and video sitemap types, automatically partitions output into search-engine-compliant files, and keeps sitemaps current through configurable background tasks.
Key capabilities
- Generates standard, news, and video sitemaps from published content
- Partitions sitemaps by year and month to manage file size at high content volumes
- Keeps sitemaps current through scheduled background tasks with configurable update frequencies
- Supports custom content types through a set of interfaces that control which URLs appear in each sitemap type
- Allows custom sitemap types, partition strategies, and task configuration through extension points
How it works
When sitemap generation is enabled, background tasks query published content that implements one of the sitemap item interfaces and pass the resulting entries through a partition strategy. The partition strategy divides entries into time-based buckets, each written to a separate XML file. A dynamic sitemap-latest.xml captures recently published content between partition updates. The root sitemap.xml serves as an index pointing to all partition files.
Use cases
News publishing
News organizations use the news sitemap to get breaking articles indexed by Google News within minutes of publication. A publisher running multiple news verticals — national, business, sports — configures a news sitemap that surfaces only articles, blog posts, and press releases published in the past 48 hours. The single-partition strategy keeps the sitemap refreshed every six hours, ensuring new content is discoverable before it loses its newsroom relevance window.
Video-first content
A media company with a large video library uses the video sitemap to improve visibility in Google's video search results. Each video content type implements VideoSiteMapItem and returns a SiteMapEntry with a populated SiteMapVideo that includes thumbnail URLs, durations, and category metadata. Search engines use this data to display rich video results with previews directly in search listings.
High-volume publishing at scale
A large publisher with millions of URLs across many years of content uses year-month partitioning to keep individual sitemap files well within the 50,000-URL and 10 MB search-engine limits. Brightspot generates one file per month-year combination and updates older partitions less frequently — monthly for content two years old, semi-annually for content older than two years — concentrating rebuild work on recent, high-priority content.
Multi-site implementations
A media group running dozens of branded sites on a single Brightspot instance configures per-site sitemaps. Each site generates its own sitemap.xml at its default URL, scoped to content owned by that site. The sitemap configuration returns different enabled types per site — a sports site enables standard and video sitemaps, while a news brand enables all three.
Custom content types
A developer adding a custom event or product content type implements SiteMapItem and overrides getSiteMapEntries to return one entry per site permalink. The entry includes a last-modified date and an appropriate change frequency, giving search engines accurate signals about how often event schedules or product listings are updated.
Who this documentation is for
- Configuration — For CMS administrators configuring sitemap types, task hosts, and per-site settings.
- Technical reference — For developers integrating custom content types into sitemaps or extending sitemap behavior.