XML Sitemap & Google News

Changelog

5.7.3

Date: 20260421
* Fix LPAD months, thanks @midwestdev
* Admin button styles

5.7.2

Date: 20260129
* Fix Google Connect instructions text
* Fix transients upgrade routine

5.7

Date: 20260121
* Bing Webmaster Tools sitemap reports
* Bing sitemap submission from admin
* Priority tags dropped

5.6.3

Date: 20251201
* Improved GSC connection instructions
* Code and text strings cleanup
* FIX: split by week DB query
* FIX: XML Sitemap Advanced compatibility

5.6

Date: 20251126
* Google Search Console sitemap reports
* Sitemap submission from admin
* Knowledge base link in admin help sections

5.5.9

Date: 20251118
* Prepare advanced sitemap notification feature.

5.5.8

Date: 20251014
* Drop unused news tags & stylesheet columns
* FIX: failing sanitize callbacks
* FIX: Squirrly SEO incompatibility warnings

5.5.7

Date: 20250915
* FIX: WPML Compatibility missing valid callback, thanks @linusbenknerkk

5.5.6

Date: 20250717
* FIX: Possible excessively long URL on admin post search, thanks @leedxw
* FIX: Notice dismiss failing

5.5.5

Date: 20250625
* Polylang index lastmods per language in core sitemap
* Resturcture admin notices
* FIX: SEOPress notices
* FIX: core sitemap index lastmods (post order)
* FIX: Polylang Pro compatibility, thanks @followalter

5.5.4

Date: 20250427
* Improved WPML compatibility
* Load core sitemaps early to prevent unnecessary queries
* FIX: dynamic property deprecated notices
* FIX: unregister GN sitemap rewite rules on deactivation

5.5.3

Date: 20250402
* FIX: missing exclude/priority meta box
* FIX: error blocking deactivation
* FIX: non-numeric value encountered in automatic priority calculations, thanks @i0n1ca
* FIX: undefined function on Clear settings

5.5

Date: 20250331
* Exclude option in Quick Editor
* Filter xmlsf_taxonomies_query_args
* Filter xmlsf_news_hours_old
* custom urls sitemap for core server
* external sitemaps for core server
* Namespacing & autoloading
* Admin notices for Slim SEO, Squirrly SEO, Jetpack Sitemaps & XML Sitemaps Manager
* FIX: Polylang news sitemap category selection
* FIX: Polylang user archive translations on Plugin sitemap
* FIX: Attempt to read property post_type on null
* FIX: Possible empty taxonomy sitemaps in index
* FIX: Missing textdomain, thanks @itapress
* FIX: Blog page lastmod date format
* FIX: Noindex robots meta header for core sitemap, thanks @ukheather
* FIX: possible empty static front page lastmod
* FIX: Max posts per sitemap not saving

5.4.9

Date: 20240506
* FIX: Unauthenticated file inclusion – CVE-2024-4441 reported by Foxyyy

5.4.8

Date: 20240329
* post types max number
* FIX: blog_public can be integer when object cache is used
* FIX: compatibility date redirect warning when using core server
* FIX: rewrite rules conflict with Polylang
* FIX: call to undefined function with Nginx Helper

5.4.5

Date: 20240221
* FIX: wp-cli disable plugin incompatibility
* FIX: trailing slash
* FIX: split by month
* FIX: disabled post types in index
* ClassicPress and WP pre-5.5 compatibility
* FIX: Undefined contact on uninstall
* FIX: admin compatibility message

5.4

Date: 20240219
* Switch between Plugin or WP core sitemap server for sitemap generation
* xmlsf_generator action hook
* xmlsf_sitemap_index_pre and xmlsf_sitemap_index_post action hooks
* xmlsf_author_has_published_posts filter
* Dropping all Ping Services (no longer supported)
* Dropping allowed domains filtering
* Exclude spammed or deleted authors on multisite
* Updated help links
* Update coding standards
* FIX: Don’t use transients if not strictly needed
* FIX: “Failed opening required” when no template
* FIX: Conversion of false to array deprecated warning

5.3.6

Date: 20230810
* FIX: Work around get_users() fatal error in WP 6.3
* FIX: Wrong Nginx helper purge urls (backport from 5.4-beta)

5.3.5

Date: 20230629
* FIX: Forced Status 200 response conflict with Etag/If-None-Match headers, thanks @revolutionnaire

5.3.4

Date: 20230530
* FIX: File not found error on invalid sitemap requests
* FIX: Lastmod date older than post date on scheduled posts

5.3.3

Date: 20230528
* FIX: Undefined variable + Invalid argument supplied for foreach(), thanks @yankyaw09

5.3.2

• FIX: Bing ping 410 error response
• FIX: Outdated help & forum links

5.3.1

• FIX: Restore wp-sitemap.xml rewrite rules after deactivation
• FIX: Call to undefined function xmlsf_get_archives()
• Use nocache_headers()

5.3

• Author sitemap
• allow custom theme templates and stylesheets
• request filters xmlsf_request and xmlsf_news_request
• news template filters xmlsf_news_publication_name and xmlsf_news_title
• sitemap template action hook xmlsf_url
• sitemap template action hooks xmlsf_news_url and xmlsf_news_tags_inner
• xmlsf_index_url_args filter
• All in One SEO Pack incompatibility message and instructions
• The SEO Framework incompatibility message and instructions
• Moved news template action hook xmlsf_news_tags_after to after closing tag
• Less DB queries, smaller memory footprint
• Better debug info with SAVEQUERIES
• Disable WP core sitemaps and redirect index
• FIX: conflicting static file deletion
• FIX: invalid form control not focusable when meta box is hidden
• FIX: force Status 200 response
• FIX: priority calculation last modified for post type
• FIX: news sitemap redirection with Polylang
• FIX: Cache-Control header no-cache

5.2.7

Date: 20191111
* Ad Inserter compatibility check
* xmlsf_urlset and xmlsf_news_urlset action hooks, thanks to Stanislav Khromov (@khromov)
* Exclude hierarchical post types from news sitemap

5.2.6

Date: 20191009
* xmlsf_tags_after, xmlsf_url_after and xmlsf_news_url_after action hooks
* Make stylesheet paths relative to prevent exclusion when using different language domains
* FIX: Taxonomy selection not available to new installs

5.2.4

Date: 20190917
* NEW Rank Math incompatibility admin warnings
* FIX undefined index
* FIX invalid form control

5.2.3

• FIX Cannot use return value in write context
• FIX issue #30 for sql_mode=ONLY_FULL_GROUP_BY, thanks @silvios
• FIX invalid form control not focusable when meta box is hidden

5.2.2

• FIX invalid date format on some PHP versions
• FIX Can’t use function return value in write context
• FIX non-cyrillic URLs stripped from External Web Pages field
• FIX Call to undefined function xmlsf_cache_get_archives()

5.2

Date: 20190429
* Image query optimization and meta caching
* Last comment date meta caching
* Lastmod and publication dates in local time
* Removed ignored image tag from news sitemap
* Max memory limit for post type and taxonomy term sitemaps
* Prevent CDN file urls
* Zlib before GZhandler on .gz request
* FIX: don’t ping for excluded posts
* FIX: traditional and simplified Chinese with WPML
* FIX: redundant front page url
* FIX: array_filter() expects parameter 1 to be array
* FIX: possible division by zero
* FIX: update_term_modified_meta
* FIX: rewrite rules on deactivate/uninstall

5.1.2

• FIX: admin notice dismiss button failing
• FIX: date archive redirect notice showing for inactive post types
• Plugin support and rate links on plugins page

5.1.1

• FIX options page not found
• FIX news sitemap only ping

5.1

Date: 20190313
* SEOPress and Catch Box incompatibility admin messages
* FIX bbPress incompatibility
* FIX failing last modified date for taxonomy sitemaps
* FIX sitemap showing when only private posts
* FIX possible sitemaps for no longer existing post types in index
* Admin interface improvements: highlighting and scroll
* Upgrade routines in own class only to be included when needed
* Moved metabox methods to dedicated classes
* NEW Respond to .gz requests (with ob_gzhandler output buffering if needed)
* NEW filters xmlsf_disabled_taxonomies, xmlsf_news_keywords, xmlsf_news_stock_tickers
* NEW action xmlsf_ping
* NEW Tools: Ping search engines and Flush rewrite rules

5.0.7

Date: 20181025
* Allowed domains back to Settings > Reading
* FIX static files check on activation
* NEW Admin warning on conflicting plugin settings
* FIX Empty post priority saved as 0.0
* FIX Call to undefined function xmlsf_get_archives()
* FIX force LC_NUMERIC locale to C
* FIX Call to private method
* FIX Custom post types with a hyphen not showing
* FIX Admin static files message fatal error, thanks @kitchin
* FIX Improper if statement in upgrade routine, thanks @kitchin
* FIX PHP 5.4 compatibility issues

5.0

Date: 20180908
* Complete code restructure and cleanup: MVC and JIT inclusion
* Fewer DB queries, much smaller memory footprint on normal queries
* NEW Admin interface with dedicated options pages and help tabs
* NEW Taxonomy term options: priority and automatic calculation
* NEW Admin warning on conflicting static files
* NEW Option to delete conflicting static files
* NEW Filters for post types: xmlsf_post_types and xmlsf_news_post_types
* NEW Filters for priority values: xmlsf_post_priority and xmlsf_term_priority
* Removal of Genre, Keywords and Access tags as Google dropped support
* Taxonomy term sitemaps speed improvement: get lastmod date from database
* Exclude Woocommerce product_shipping_class taxonomy
* PHP 7.2+ compat: create_function deprecated
* No more domain filtering for custom URLs and external sitemaps
* FIX Gutenberg editor GN genre taxonomy not showing
* FIX Plain and /index.php/ permalink structure
* FIX Clear all options on uninstall
* FIX Pings

4.9.4

• FIX: missing featured images, thanks @flyerua
• FIX: double content type response header filtering

4.9.3

• Reinstate filter_no_news_limits, allowing post type array
• Improved language handling and new language filter xmlsf_post_language
• Force text/xml Content-Type response header

4.9.2

• FactCheck genre causes error in Search Console

4.9.1

• FIX: double genre terms on upgrade from 4.4, thanks @mouhalves
• FIX: wp_count_posts uncached and too heavy on large sites, thanks @carlalexander
• Last-modified response header now linked to Update on comments setting
• FIX: plugin_basename propagation

4.9

Date: 20180507
* Code cleanup
* FactCheck genre
* Changefreq tag dropped
* translation strings for genres
* FIX: zlib.output_compression compatibility, thanks @alicewondermiscreations
* FIX: permalink issue with Woocommerce account page endpoints
* FIX: undefined index in news post types

4.8.3

• fix get_lastpostdate array/string
• restore pre PHP 5.4 compatibility (popular request)

4.8

Date: 20180316
* Conditional functions is_sitemap() and is_news()
* code cleanup and annotation
* new google ping URL
* revisit get first/last date/modified functions and cache key set/delete
* FIX: cache key missing timezone
* FIX: wp_rewrite init before flush_rules

4.7.6

• FIX Open_BaseDir issue on IIS server

4.7.5

Date: 20161207
* FIX: On cache_flush purge also the respective time_key cache entry,
props @e2robert https://wordpress.org/support/topic/object-cache-issue-results-in-outdated-last-modified-values-on-index-sitemap/
* FIX: Variable variable php 7 compat
* Detect if headers are already sent and print warning in source

4.7.4

• Another WPML compat issue fixed, special thanks to hermes3por3

4.7.3

• xmlsf_excluded filter
• IMPROVEMENT: Polylang and WPML compatibility issues
• FIX: “Only variables should be passed by reference” strict warning
• FIX: PHP 5.3 compatibility

4.7

Date: 20160506
* WPML compatibility
* FIX: News Sitemap chinese language tag
* FIX: flush rules on plugin re-activation

4.6.3

• filter xmlsf_custom_sitemaps
• BUGFIX: empty custom urls sitemap

4.6.2

• filter xmlsf_custom_urls
• More cleanup
• BUGFIX: broken Polylang compatibility reported by @zesseb

4.6.1

Date: 20160407
* Code cleanup
* POT file update
* Dutch translation update

4.6

• xmlsf_news_tags_after action hook
• Attempt to remove static sitemap files left over by other sitemap plugins

4.5.1

• fix Persistent/Stored XSS vulnerability on admin page, thanks to Sneha Rajguru @Sneharajguru

4.5

• Set Google News access tag per post
• Exclude posts from Google News sitemap
• News Sitemap stylesheet text/links update
• FIX: cache_delete cached key instead of cache_flush as suggested by Jeremy Clarke https://wordpress.org/support/topic/please-stop-running-wp_cache_flush-whenever-posts-are-edited
• Nginx Helper compatibility to purge cache sitemap URLs from FastCGI Cache or Redis

4.4.1

• BUGFIX contribution by alejandra.aranibar: multiple news post types makes get_lastdate return oldest instead of newest date
• BUGFIX plugins_url filter not working, reported by Michael
• Dropped GN Geolocation tag support
• Dropped XMLSF_POST_TYPE and XMLSF_NEWS_POST_TYPE defines support
• Multiple default genres

4.4

• Pings max once per hour (5 minutes for news sitemap)
• Seperate ping for Google News Sitemap
• Append custom/static sitemaps to the index
• Include other post types in News Sitemap
• Optionally limit posts to certain categories in News Sitemap
• Noindex response header for sitemaps to keep them out of search results
• Static sitemap stylesheets
• Controversial default robots.txt rules removed
• DB query streamlining
• BUGFIX: fatal error on . (dot) as category base in permalinks
• BIGFIX: PHP Strict notices
• Force object cache flush on post publication

4.3.2

• Italian translation
• BUGFIX: html esc / filter image title and caption tags
• BUGFIX: empty terms counted causing empty taxonomy sitemap appearing in index
• BUGFIX: custom taxonomies where lastmod cannot be determined show empty lastmod tag

4.3

• Google News sitemap settings section
• Google News tags: access, genres, keywords, geo_locations
• Improved Google News stylesheet
• Custom Google News Publication Name
• Image tags in Google News sitemap
• Custom URLs
• Allow additional domains
• Image caption and title tags
• Ping Yandex and Baidu optional
• BUGFIX: Ineffective robots.txt rules
• BUGFIX: Priority value 0 in post meta not saved
• BUGFIX: Ping for all post types
• BUGFIX: Custom taxonomy support
• BUGFIX: Split by month shows year

4.2.4

• Image tags
• Rearranged settings section
• FIX: replace permalink, title and bloginfo rss filter hooks with own

4.2.3

• BUGFIX: Empty ping options after disabling the main sitemap
• BUGFIX: Empty language tag for Google News tags in posts sitemap
• Small back end changes
• Custom post types split by year/month

4.2

• Image & News tags
• Exclude pages/posts

4.1.4

• BUGFIX: Pass by reference fatal error in PHP 5.4
• BUGFIX: issue with Polylang language code in pretty permalinks setting
• BUGFIX: unselected post types in sitemap
• BUGFIX: 1+ Priority for sticky posts with comments
• Dutch and French translations updated

4.1

• Ping Google and Bing on new publications
• Set priority per post
• Priority calculation options
• Option to split posts by year or month for faster generation of each sitemap
• Reduced queries to increase performance
• Improved Lastmod and Changefreq calculations
• Core class improvements
• Dropped qTranslate support
• Dropped PHP4 support
• BUGFIX: removed several PHP notices

4.0.1

• Dutch and French translations
• BUGFIX: Non public sites still have sitemap by default
• BUGFIX: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() when all post types are off
• BUGFIX: Wrong translation dir

4.0.0

• Moved to sitemap index and seperated post/page sitemaps
• options to dswitch off sitemap and news sitemap
• select which post types to include
• select which taxonomies to include
• set additional robots.txt rules
• Translation POT catalogue
• Improved Polylang support
• Dropped xLanguage support
• qTranslate currently untested

3.9.2

• Basic Google News feed stylesheet
• improvement on XSS vulnerability fix
• Fixed trailing slash

3.9.1

• SECURITY: XSS vulnerability in sitemap.xsl.php

3.9

• Google News Sitemap
• Memory limit error workaround (for most sites)

3.8.8

• BUGFIX: PHP4 compatibility
• BUGFIX: stylesheet URL when installed in mu-plugins
• core change to class
• minified sitemap output by default

3.8.5

• xLanguage support based on code and testing by Daniele Pelagatti
• new FILTER HOOK robotstxt_sitemap_url for any translate and url changing plugins.
• BUGFIX: Decimal separator cannot be a comma!

3.8.3

• filter out external URLs inserted by plugins like Page Links To (thanks, Francois)
• minify sitemap and stylesheet output
• BUGFIX: qTranslate non-default language home URL

3.8

• qTranslate support
• no more Sitemap reference in robots.txt on non-public blogs

3.7.4

• switch from add_feed (on init) to the do_feed_$feed hook
• BUGFIX: is_404() condition TRUE and Response Header 404 on sites without posts
• BUGFIX: is_feed() condition FALSE after custom query_posts
• BUGFIX: no lastmod on home url when only pages on a site
• BUGFIX: stylesheet url wrong when WP installed in a subdir

3.7

• massive changefreq calculation improvement
• further priority calulation improvement taking last comment date into account

3.6.1

• BUGFIX: wrong date calculation on blogs less than 1 year old

3.6

• massive priority calculation improvement

3.5

• complete rewrite of plugin internals
• speed improvements
• WP 3.0 (normal and MS mode) ready

3.4

• BUGFIX: use home instead of siteurl for blog url for sitemap reference in robots.txt
• code streamline and cleanup

3.3

• automatic exclusion of tags blog in wpmu

3.2

• rewrite and add_feed calls improvements
• BUGFIX: double entry when static page is frontpage

3.0

• added styling to the xml feed to make it human readable

2.1

• BUGFIX: lastmod timezone offset displayed wrong (extra space and missing double-colon)

2.0

• priority calculation based on comments and age
• changefreq based on comments

1.0

• changed feed template location to avoid the need to relocate files outside the plugins folder
• BUGFIX: get_post_modified_time instead of get_post_time

0.1

• rework from Patrick Chia’s Standard XML Sitemaps
• increased post urls limit from 100 to 1000 (of max. 50,000 allowed by the Sitemap protocol)