Next Up: Google Sitemaps for zenphoto

Someone over at the zenphoto forum requested a google sitemap plugin.  It sounds like a good idea, so I’ve started looking into it.  I figure this will be a good experience for me as I have never created a sitemap before…  I know that makes me a horrible developer, but I guess we’ll just have to look past that won’t we.

Anyway, the idea is sound and it’s something worthwhile at least for my own experience.  I think I’m set as far as learning the structure of a sitemap, although I need to look into details for how many levels of childmaps you can have.  I am also in a temporary holding pattern as i decide where/how to break into childmaps.  It would seem that a childmap for every album/sub album would be appropriate, so that is my most likely avenue to pursue, although I will probably start off with just a single large map for testing purposes.  Maybe I should make it an option?

Here are some of the major features I’d like to build into the plugin:

• Sitemap entry for every gallery/album/image page.
• Do not create entry for unpublished albums (plugin option).
• Support childmaps on a per (sub)album level. (plugin option)
• Notify google of sitemap updates (optional)
• Notify other service(i.e. yahoo/msn/whoever) of sitemap updates (optional/long term goal)

I really don’t know what features are highly desired by people, so if you stumble upon this post and it’s fairly current, please comment and let me know.