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