GMCsitemap — Documentation

GMCsitemap is a set-and-forget sitemap generator for Joomla and WordPress. After install, it builds four sitemaps (XML, HTML, image, video) automatically and pings Google, Bing and Yandex every time you publish or update an article. This page covers everything a buyer needs to know.

Install

Joomla 4 / 5 / 6

Download pkg_gmcsitemap-X.Y.Z.zip from the link in your purchase email.
In the Joomla admin, go to System → Extensions → Install.
Select the Upload Package File tab and drop the zip.
Click Upload & Install. The plugin is enabled automatically.

WordPress 6.x

Download gmcsitemap.zip.
In the WP admin, go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin.
Choose the zip and click Install Now → Activate.

The plugin generates sitemaps on the fly the first time a search engine requests one. No build step required.

Configure

Open the plugin settings:

Joomla: Components → GMCsitemap
WordPress: Settings → GMCsitemap

You will see four configuration tabs:

Tab	What it controls
General	Site URL, default `changefreq`, default `priority`, max URLs per file (default 50 000).
Sources	Which content types to include: articles, categories, custom post types, products.
Search engines	Toggle auto-ping to Google, Bing, Yandex.
Exclude	Per-section, per-category or URL-pattern exclusions.

The 4 sitemaps

GMCsitemap exposes four endpoints at your site root. All four are crawler-discoverable from robots.txt automatically.

Endpoint	Format	For
`/sitemap.xml`	XML	Standards-compliant XML sitemap for Google, Bing, Yandex.
`/sitemap.html`	HTML page	Human visitors and crawlers that prefer HTML navigation.
`/sitemap-images.xml`	Image XML	Indexes all images with their alt text and captions. Boosts Google Images.
`/sitemap-videos.xml`	Video XML	Auto-detects embedded YouTube, Vimeo and self-hosted videos.

Submit to search engines

Even though GMCsitemap pings automatically on every content update, it is good practice to submit your sitemap once in each search console — it accelerates the first crawl.

Google Search Console

Open Search Console.
Select your property → Sitemaps.
Enter sitemap.xml and click Submit.

Bing Webmaster Tools

Open Bing Webmaster.
Select your site → Sitemaps.
Add the full URL: https://yoursite.com/sitemap.xml.

Multilingual / hreflang

GMCsitemap detects multilingual setups automatically:

Joomla — uses native Article Associations.
WordPress — detects WPML and Polylang.

For every translated URL it emits a <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="…"> entry. No configuration required — turn it on and you are done.

<url>
  <loc>https://fvtv.es/en/services</loc>
  <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="es" href="https://fvtv.es/es/servicios"/>
  <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="it" href="https://fvtv.es/it/servizi"/>
</url>

Exclude rules

By default the plugin includes every published article and category. To keep noise out of the index:

Open Settings → Exclude.
Add rules one per line. Three formats are supported: category:42, tag:internal, or /pattern/*.
Save. The next sitemap fetch reflects the new rules.

Troubleshooting

Problem	Likely cause	Fix
404 on `/sitemap.xml`	URL rewriting is off	Joomla: enable Use URL rewriting. WP: Settings → Permalinks → Post name.
Empty sitemap	No published content for the selected sources	At least one content type must be enabled in Settings → Sources.
Old URLs still appear	Cache plugin or CDN	Purge the cache for `/sitemap*`. The plugin emits a `Last-Modified` header.
Search Console: "Couldn't fetch"	HTTPS misconfigured	Open the sitemap in incognito to test. Fix mixed-content or certificate errors.
Ping failures	Outbound HTTP blocked	Whitelist `google.com`, `bing.com`, `yandex.com` in your firewall.

Updates & support

Your purchase includes 12 months of updates. New versions appear in your account page; install them the same way as the initial install — the previous configuration is preserved.

For everything else, reach out on WhatsApp. Average response time is 24 business hours.