In some cases, you may wish to make sure that the contents of your VuFind system are visible beyond your local site. This page provides tips and tools for increasing and controlling search engine visibility.

This feature was added after the release of VuFind 1.0.1.

Several search engines look for sitemap files which list all of the pages of your site and ensure that no content is missed during indexing. For example, sitemaps are useful in combination with Google Webmaster Tools.

VuFind comes with a simple tool for generating sitemaps. To use it, follow these steps:

1. Edit the sitemap.ini file under your VuFind installation to specify the location of the generated sitemaps and some other settings. All options are explained by comments within the file.

2. Switch to the util folder under your VuFind installation, and run:

php sitemap.php

This may take some time. When it is complete, your sitemap file(s) will be generated.

You may wish to automate this so that sitemaps are built on a regular basis; see the Automation page for tips on automating VuFind-related tasks.

Sitemap generation was originally achieved with the help of a custom Solr response handler designed to quickly dump out record IDs. The full source for this handler can be found in VuFind's Subversion repository here. However, subsequent revisions of the code (including all officially released versions) have eliminated the need for this custom module, instead making use of the standard Solr TermsComponent.

robots.txt - Recommendations for restricting search engine access to avoid confusing results and/or unnecessary server load.