GNSG – Google news Sitemap generator is a native Joomla 1.5 component, able to dynamically generate sitemaps for Google News. Please note this is just for Google News, not for common Google Search Engine.
Author
This component was conceived and created by Andrea Olivato – follow me on twitter
Status
The component is still in development. Core Sef, Sh404Sef, Core Sef without mod_rewrite and no Sef component are supported at the moment.
Features
- Built following Google News sitemap standards
- Only shows articles from the last two days, as requested from Google News rules {read more}
- Articles limited to 50000, as requested from Google News rules {read more}
- Easy administration interface
- Dynamically generated sitemap. Google will always find your latest articles.
- Override Joomla language code, with the one needed from Google
- Core Sef support
- Core Sef without mod_rewrite support
- Support for non-sef installations
- Sh404Sef Support
Download
This time there won’t be different versions for each SEF service, but a single version able to switch via the Administration interface. So, no multiple downloads, no difficult on choosing. Just go ahead and download the extension: com_gnsg-10.02.07.zip
Git Sources
Sources are available on GitHub where you can checkout everything you need, modify as you prefer and fork if you want.
- GitHub homepage : http://github.com/andreaolivato/GNSG
- Git from command line : git clone git://github.com/andreaolivato/GNSG.git
Installation
As this is a common component for Joomla, you can install it as you do with any component: login to your admin, choose Extension => Install/uninstall from the top menu, then select the downloaded files in the Upload Package File field and press Upload. Yes, you’re done!
Basic Configuration
Google requires some parameters to be specified in the sitemap, so I created a quick administration panel for you to configure them. Just login in your Joomla administration panel and navigate into Components => GoogleNews Sitemap Gen.
Your admin interface should be something like the one shown below
For your sitemap to be fully working you need to fill at least the first field: Pubblication Name. This is the name of your site as shown on Google News pages, without anything in parentheticals. Please have a look at Google News Sitemap documentation for more information about this field.
Another important configuration is the latest field, which determinates what kind of url rewrite component you’re using. Please be sure to select the right value, or your submitted urls would trow a 404 Error.
Submitting your sitemap to Google
After configuring the required parameters you can proceed on previewing and then submitting your news sitemap to Google.
The url of your sitemap is specified in the administration interface as shown before, just copy that address to submit it. Please refer to Google News Sitemap documentation for further information on how to submit your sitemap.
Licence
Google News Sitemap Generator
Copyright (C) 2010 Andrea Olivato
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/
Changelog
- 07 Feb 2010 – Bugfixed article times
- 29 Jan 2010 – Introduced language override setting
- 26 Jan 2010 – Added Support for section/category urls and for url suffix (.html) in core sef
- 24 Jan 2010 – Bugfixed double encoding
- 23 Jan 2010 – Bugfixed sh404 and core sef
- 22 Jan 2010 – Bugfixed Core Sef component
- 18 Jan 2010 – Added Sh404Sef support
- 17 Jan 2010 – Added support for Sef without mod_rewrite and non Sef installations
- 10 Jan 2010 - Initial Release
