Quick Start Guide

Introduction

The purpose of this guide is to introduce you to the software and get you up and running very quickly. At first, all of the features and options may seem overwhelming, but after reading through this guide, you should feel very comfortable.

Install Prerequisites

The software requires the Microsoft .NET Framework v2.0. The download is approximately 26 MB and installs in 2‐3 minutes. If you do not already have the .NET framework 2.0 installed, download it here from Microsoft's web site.

Installing the KeyLimeTie Sitemap Generator

If you haven't downloaded the Sitemap Generator software, please download it via the Purchase page. The installation is very quick. Once completed, you'll see a desktop icon and a new Programs menu entry, and you are ready to get started.

Licensed Users

After installation, start the software and enter your PayPal email address in the first tab to unlock the software.

Starting Sitemap Generator

To launch Sitemap Generator, either double‐click the desktop icon or launch it via the Program menus. When it starts up, a splash screen will appear and your license will be authenticated. Trial users will get a message box stating no license was found. Simply click "OK".

The tabs across the top of the application are in the order you should work.

Start Tab

The purpose of this tab is to give you a real brief description of the other tabs. If you have purchased a license or would like to be notified when new versions are available, you can enter in your email address.

My Websites Tab

On this tab, you enter in your website address. You can enter in as many websites as you like. When adding a new website, there is an option to copy the preferences of another website you have already entered. This isn't applicable for the first website you enter, but might be useful when entering subsequent websites.

Preferences Tab

This is the only tab where users typically have questions. There are a lot of options and some of them may be unfamiliar to you. As a general rule, the default preferences are perfect for most websites. Some websites may require minor changes to the preferences. Next to each option is a short description and example. We will now go through each preference in detail.

• Change Freq: Google wants to know the change frequency of your web pages. The application cannot determine this, so it asks you for a default value. After you get through the preferences and review your results, you'll have a chance to change this for any of your pages. So for now, select a change frequency that is accurate for most of your web pages.
• Priority: Google wants to know how important each web page on your website is in regards to other pages. A value of 1.0 is very high. Your home page might be a 1.0. A value of 0.1 is very low. Your "About Us" page might be 0.1. This setting is really only important for websites that have over 5,000 web pages. This tells Google which pages you want them to index first in case they decide to index your website in batches over a period of time. If you have less than 5,000 web pages, Google will usually index your entire website all at once. In that case, leave the priority to 0.5. Note: Priority has nothing to do with other websites, so do not set all web pages to 1.0 thinking you'll have some advantage.
• GZip Sitemaps: GZip is very similar to WinZip. If your website has a lot of web pages (over 20,000), Google would like you to compress your sitemap so they can retrieve it faster. It is not required, but Google prefers it. If your website isn't that large, do not check this option.
• Show Advertising: You'll notice a small advertising banner in the top right corner of the application. Every 10‐20 seconds a new banner displays. You have the option to turn this off. This has nothing to do with the sitemaps.
• Last Modified:Google wants to know when each of your web pages was last modified. The application choices here are:
  • Use server's modified date: This is the best option. As the software spiders through your website, it will ask the server when the file was last modified. If the server cannot provide the date, the application will use the date entered in the box next to this field. If this field is blank, it will use today's date.
  • Use today's date: If this option is selected, every web page will have a last modified date of today.
  • Let me specify the date:If this option is selected, the date entered in the box next to this field will be used for every web page.
• Spider Start Directory:Very few websites don't have their home page in the root directory. In this case, you can specify where the spidering needs to start.
• Ignore Querystring: A querystring is the values passed in the URL. For example: http://www.website.com/home.aspx?sessionid=12345&page=home has querystring values sessionid=12345 and page=home. Most websites try to pass these values page to page by other means, but some use querystrings. In this example, the person visiting this web page has a sessionid of 12345 (some random value generated by the website). Another visitor might have a sessionid of 23456. The point is, this has nothing to do with the web page and Google doesn't want it. In this example, you would want to put sessionid in the "Ignore Querystring" field.
• Ignore URL Strings: In very few cases, you might want to ignore pages that have certain words. For example, suppose you have an ecommerce site and when visitors add an item to their cart, it navigates to addtocart.aspx. The "Add to Cart" page has no value in being indexed in Google as it doesn't contain content pertaining to your website. You might want to ignore this page.
• Ignore Folders: Some websites have folders of web pages and files they do not want indexed by any search engine. In this case, you can specify the folder and the Sitemap Generator will know to ignore it when found.
• Valid file extensions: This list contains the extensions of files that the spider should add to the sitemaps and spider for more links.
• Default pages: When default pages are specified, the application will remove them from the url. For example, if the application finds http://www.website.com/home.htm and home.htm is a default page, it will tell the search engines that the URL is http://www.website.com/. This is beneficial in case you decide you want to make newhome.htm the new default page. Since the search engines indexed http://www.website.com/ (without the page name), you can change it to whatever you want and your indexed results will still work when people search for your website. This is the "search engine friendly" approach.
• Page timeout: Number of seconds the application should wait for a response from your website. 30 seconds is a good default.
• Pause time: Number of seconds the application should pause between each web page request. If you have a powerful web server, I would leave it at 0. If you are worried about stressing the server too much, a 2 or 3 second wait might be appropriate.
• Sitemap name prefix: File name prefix when the Google and HTML sitemaps are generated.
• FTP Host, Login and Password: After generating Google, Yahoo and HTML sitemaps and RSS Feeds, you can have the application FTP the files to your web server. You would need to provide a valid host, login and password.
• FTP Remote Path: Not all websites are located in the root of the server. In this case, you can specify the path to FTP the files to.
• Website Local Path: If you want to run the software on your web server and have the sitemaps copied to the website directory, you would specify the website folder path here.
• Website Port Number: The standard internet port number 80. If your website runs on a different port (very unlikely) or if you want to run the sitemap generator against a test environment where the port number may be different, enter the port number here.
• Ignore commented HTML/JavaScript: Some websites have HTML, JavaScript or other code that is commented out and not executed. The sitemap generator will find these links unless you check this option.
• Format Sitemap Output: Some users like to view the sitemap file’s contents. If this preference is unchecked, the text is not formatted nicely in order to save space and decrease the file size. If this preference is checked, the text is nicely formatted and easy to read.
• Automatically save spider progress every: If you have used other sitemap generators, you will immediately notice how much faster this application is. The reason why is because all of the work is done in memory. Most sitemap generators use a database and it takes a lot of time to constantly query and update a database. This preference is beneficial for sites with over 1,000 web pages. Here you can specify how often you would like the progress of the spidering to be saved. In the case you lose power to your computer of the internet connection, this option allows you to pickup where you left off.
• Load from Robots.txt: Some websites have a robots.txt file on the server with some of the above preferences defined. This button will retrieve the robots.txt file, parse through it and set the preferences. If you never heard of this file, you most certainly don't have one on your website.
• Import Sitemap From A File: If you already have a Google sitemap, you can import it into the application. This button requires the sitemap to be on your computer.
• Import Sitemap From Website: If you already have a Google sitemap on your website, you can import it into the application. This button requires the sitemap to be on your website.
• Delete Existing Sitemap: If you would like the current sitemap deleted from your computer and start over for the website, click this button. It will not delete the sitemap from your website.

As you can see now, the preferences really aren't that complicated. Chances are, you won't modify anything except the FTP credentials.

Spider Website Tab

Once you have your preferences all set, it's time to spider your website. Once you click the "Start" button, the application will search through your entire website (just like Google, Yahoo and other serach engines) and find all of the web pages.

• Results Detail Level: How much spidering detail do you want to see? If your site is very large (over 50,000 web pages), we recommend no messaging. Messaging can slow the spidering a little. We recommend low messaging unless you want to debug what's going on. For example, some users will notice pages being found that they didn't know existed or thought they had removed. With High messaging, this person can review the messages and see exactly where the page was found.
• Export messages: If you would like to review the messages while the application is spidering or not, click this button and all messages will be exported to a plain text file.
• Freeze messages: You can also review the messages while the application is spidering. For performance reasons, only 5,000 entries are shown at a time. If you see the list start to scroll and you want to freeze it to read the messages, click this button.

Edit Results Tab

After the spidering has completed, you have the option to edit your results. You can edit the entries or delete entries you do not want in your sitemap.

• Select rows where the: This first row of fields gives you the ability to filter what results you see. For example, if you only want to see rows where the word "product" exists in the URL, change the fields to: Select rows where the loc contains product. Then click "Apply Filter". Click "Clear Filter" to remove all filtering options.
• Change: You can edit entries one‐by‐one or you can change them in groups. For example, if you wanted to change the "changefreq" from monthly to daily for all pages, you would change the fields to: Change changefreq to daily. Then click "Apply Change". Be sure to save.

Your results are now ready to be generated into sitemaps!

Sitemaps Tab

• Search Engines: Select the formats you would like generated. The available choices are: Google, Ask.com, Yahoo, HTML and RSS Feeds.
• Actions: The following actions are available:
  • Generate Sitemap: Generates the sitemap file for each selected fomat.
  • FTP Sitemap: FTP's your sitemap files(s) to your website. Note: You must enter FTP credentials into the Preferences tab for this button to be enabled.
  • Copy Sitemap: Copies your sitemap files(s) to your website. Note: You must enter a local website path into the Preferences tab for this button to be enabled.
  • Notify Google: If you have already setup a Google account, this button will tell Google that your sitemap has been updated and needs to be reindexed in their search engine. If you have not setup an account, skip this for now as we'll go over Google Account later in this guide.
  • Notify Ask: This button will tell Ask.com that your sitemap has been updated and needs to be reindexed in their search engine.

Your sitemaps are done!

Scheduling Tab

When the Sitemap Generator was installed on your computer, a separate service was installed that handles scheduling. The top area of this tab allows you to start and stop the service.

• Frequency: If the Sitemap Generator service is running and you would like you sitemaps to be generated periodically, choose a frequency and click Save. When it's time to regenerate the sitemaps, the service will automatically spider your website, regenerate all sitemaps and the RSS Feed, FTP and/or copy the files to your website (if preferences are set) and notify Google.

Help/Support

An online forum is available 24 hour a day at http://forums.keylimetie.com. We made this forum available inside the application as well. From here, you can read forum entries, report issues and made suggestions.

Setup your Google Account

In order to participate in the Google Sitemap program, you need to setup a Google Account. It's very easy and only takes approximately 10‐15 minutes.

1. Navigate to Google Webmaster Central: http://www.google.com/webmasters/
2. Click the "Webmaster tools (including Sitemaps)" link.
3. On the right side of the page is an area to login or create an account. Click the "Create a Google Account" link.
4. Fill in all of the form fields and click the button to create an account.
5. An email will be sent to you. Open that email and click the link to verify your account.
6. Your account will now be verified. Click the “Click here to continue.” link.
7. Now you want to add your website. Enter your website URL and click OK.
8. You will be taken to a page where you now need to verify you are the owner of the website. Click the "Verify your site" link.
9. Choose "Upload an HTML file" and the web page will tell you what to name that file. Now open Notepad and save the empty file as the name Google told you to name it. Or open your website authoring software (Frontpage, etc.), add a new webpage and name it what Google told you to name it. Finally, FTP the file to your website.
10. Once the file is on your website, click the "Verify" button on the Google web page. Google will now know you're the owner of the website.
11. Click the "Sitemaps" tab at the top of the Google webpage.
12. Click the "Add a Sitemap" link.
13. Choose "Add General Web Sitemap" and enter in the full path of your Google sitemap. It should be http://www.yourwebsite.com/sitemap.xml. Now click "Add Web Sitemap."

Google is now aware of your sitemap and should download it within 24‐48 hours (maybe even sooner). You no longer need to visit this site as you can "Notify Google" from the Sitemap Generator. We do recommend you visit this area every once in awhile to view your sitemap statistics and make sure your sitemap doesn't have any errors.