sitemap-brainstorming

Per the microformats process this page documents attempts to brainstorm a sitemap and related mechanisms microformat.

Note : We define 'site mapping' as the process of generating a particular sitemap flavour, like sitemap.xml or an HTML sitemap, or something related like an HTML5 cache manifest.

Note : Here we are attempting to derive a simple mechanism, lowest common denominator and driven by a top level HTML nav mechanism. We are not considering crawlers etc just yet. It is possible that later when/if we look at crawlers we may need to encode some kind of order information (for now this is explicitly defined in the order the author defined the link elements).

Brainstorming solution 1

Content and class values

• h-sitemap required
  • wraps a sitemap block
• u-url, required
  • every link element we want included in a generated artifact must be annotated with this
• p-priority-x, optional
  • only pertinent to sitemap.xml
  • p-priority-0-0 = 0.0, p-priority-0.1 = 0.1 ... p-priority-1-0 = 1.0
  • if the author fails to specify a priority it is sane to assume a machine may generate the default of 0.5 as per the sitemaps.org protocol
• p-change-x, optional
  • only pertinent to sitemap.xml
  • we can lift the possible values directly out of the sitemaps.org protocol (p-change-always|p-change-hourly...)

Notes:

• We ignore lastmod for now (again only pertinent to sitemap.xml)
• Google (and maybe others) ignore priority and changefreq [1]

Examples

Simple HTML sitemap or cache manifest example

<ul class="h-sitemap">
  <li>
    <a class="u-url" href="http://www.site.tld/">Home</a>
  </li>
  <li>
    <a class="u-url" href="http://www.site.tld/section1/">Section 1</a>
  </li>
</ul>

sitemap.xml example with changefreq specified

<ul class="h-sitemap">
  <li>
    <a class="u-url p-change-daily" href="http://www.site.tld/">Home</a>
  </li>
  <li>
    <a class="u-url p-change-weekly" href="http://www.site.tld/section1/">Section 1</a>
  </li>
</ul>

sitemap.xml example with changefreq and priority specified

<ul class="h-sitemap">
  <li>
    <a class="u-url p-change-daily p-priority-1-0" href="http://www.site.tld/">Home</a>
  </li>
  <li>
    <a class="u-url p-change-weekly p-priority-0-8" href="http://www.site.tld/section1/">Section 1</a>
  </li>
</ul>

sitemap.xml example where nav mechanism is structured differently

<div class="h-sitemap">
  <a class="u-url p-change-weekly p-priority-0-6" href="/section1">Section 1</a>
  <span>.</span>
  <a class="u-url p-change-monthly p-priority-0-4" href="/section2">Section 2</a>
</div>

see also

• sitemap
• sitemap-examples
• sitemap-formats
• sitemap-brainstorming
• sitemap-issues