Custom sitemap for recently updated products

Hello @septero,

Thank you for contacting Rank Math support.

Our plugin updates the sitemaps based on the last modified date of the posts/products in it. So, LiteSpeed should be able to discover recently updated products from our plugin’s default sitemaps.

However, if you want a custom sitemap, then you can use the following filter to create it: https://rankmath.com/kb/custom-sitemaps/

You will have to modify the provided filter to add the recently uploaded products dynamically. That kind of modification falls out of the scope of our support, and you will have to hire a professional developer to do that if you are not sure how to do that on your own.

Hope that helps, and please do not hesitate to let us know if you need our assistance with anything else.

Hello,

Thank you for quick answer.

I have followed all steps from the guide in order to generate simple custom sitemap. However without luck. Please find below what steps I took:

1. In child theme folder, I have created a custom-sitemap.php file with the following content (I have edited only get_sitemap_links):

<?php

namespace RankMath\Sitemap\Providers;

defined( 'ABSPATH' ) || exit;

class Custom implements Provider {

	public function handles_type( $type ) {
		return 'custom' === $type;
	}

	public function get_index_links( $max_entries ) {
		return [
			[
				'loc'     => \RankMath\Sitemap\Router::get_base_url( 'custom-sitemap.xml' ),
				'lastmod' => '',
			]
		];
	}

	public function get_sitemap_links( $type, $max_entries, $current_page ) {
		$links     = [ 
			[
				'loc' => 'https://techprofi.pl/',
				'lastmod' => '2023-10-16',
			],
			[
				'loc' => 'https://techprofi.pl/o-nas/',
				'lastmod' => '2023-10-16',
			],
		];

		return $links;
	}

}

2. Next I added the following code in Code Snippets plugin and set it to be added on the entire website (backend + frontend, same code as in guide):

include_once 'custom-sitemap.php';
add_filter('rank_math/sitemap/providers', function( $external_providers ) {
	$external_providers['custom'] = new \RankMath\Sitemap\Providers\Custom();
	return $external_providers;
});

3. For LiteSpeed cache plugin, I have disabled sitemap caching by adding following lines into LiteSpeed Cache → Cache → Excludes:

/(.*)sitemap(.*).xml
/(.*)sitemap.xsl
/sitemap_index.xsl
/sitemap_index.xml

4. I cleared the entire LiteSpeed cache and additionaly restarted the cache according to this video: https://i.rankmath.com/pipRDp

5. After entering the custom sitemap page, I have blank page with fatal WordPress error. Error according to log file: “CRITICAL Uncaught Error: Class “RankMath\Sitemap\Providers\Custom” not found in xxx/public_html/wp-content/plugins/code-snippets/php/snippet-ops.php(581) : eval ()’d code:5″

How to fix above error?

With best regards

Hello @septero,

We tested your code on our end and it seems to be working fine as you can see in this screenshot: https://i.rankmath.com/i/nM8CUp

Firstly, ensure that you are using the latest version of Rank Math plugin. If not yet, please do update them. You may refer to our changelog page here: https://rankmath.com/changelog/

If the issue persists, can you please try putting the code include_once 'custom-sitemap.php'; code in your child theme’s functions.php instead?

Let us know how that goes. Looking forward to helping you.

Hello,

Thank you for your answer.

The custom sitemap started working when I pasted the code directly into functions.php. After placing the same code into Code Snippets plugin, I always get the fatal WordPress error that I mentioned in my previous comment. I tried to change the priority (e.g. to 1), but it has no effect. Nevertheless, after pasting into functions.php, everything works:)

RankMath version: 1.0.204

I started working on creating a custom sitemap that will only show products that were last updated at the declared time (e.g. in the last hour).

I use following code:

<?php

namespace RankMath\Sitemap\Providers;

defined( 'ABSPATH' ) || exit;

use WC_Product_Query;

class Custom implements Provider {

    // Check if this provider handles the specified sitemap type
    public function handles_type( $type ) {
        return 'custom' === $type;
    }

    // Get the index links for the sitemap
    public function get_index_links( $max_entries ) {
        return [
            [
                'loc'     => \RankMath\Sitemap\Router::get_base_url( 'custom-sitemap.xml' ),
                'lastmod' => date('c'), // Get the current date and time in ISO 8601 format
            ]
        ];
    }

    // Get the sitemap links for the specified sitemap type
    public function get_sitemap_links( $type, $max_entries, $current_page ) {
        $links = [];

        if ('custom' === $type) {
            // Calculate the time ie. one hour ago
            $hoursAgo = date('Y-m-d H:i:s', strtotime('-1 hour'));

            $product_query = new WC_Product_Query(array(
                'limit'         => $max_entries,
                'page'          => $current_page,
                'date_modified' => $hoursAgo, // Only products modified within the defined hours
            ));

            $products = $product_query->get_products();

            // Generate links for each product
            foreach ($products as $product) {
                $links[] = [
                    'loc'     => get_permalink($product->get_id()),
                    'lastmod' => $product->get_date_modified('c') ?: $product->get_date_created('c'),
                ];
            }
        }

        return $links;
    }
}

My sitemap is accessible on this url: https://techprofi.pl/custom-sitemap.xml

All sitemaps are here: https://techprofi.pl/sitemap_index.xml

My custom sitemap is generating and returning products so at first glance it is working ok, but nevertheless, I have following questions:

1. After clearing the sitemap cache according to the instructions: https://i.rankmath.com/pipRDp, the dates in the “Last Modification Time” column on default products sitemap were changed to the current date (they are not loaded from the product pages, sample sitemap: https://techprofi.pl/product-sitemap1.xml). Additionally, the number of images for products has been changed to 0 (adding images is enabled in the Rank Math options). How to restore to the correct date and number of images for products? For example sitemap for pages have correct timestamps and image count.

Due to the fact that the timestamps in the default product sitemap have been changed, I cannot fully check the operation of my code.

2. Despite defining the ‘lastmod’ parameter in the code, no dates (either product creation or modification) are displayed in the “Last Modification Time” column in my custom sitemap. How to display the timestamp?

3. On sitemap index page only the link to custom-sitemap.xml is visble. How to show all divided links to sitemaps, e.g. custom-sitemap1.xml, custom-sitemap2.xml, etc. Of course, they are available via a direct link, so this is a minor problem.

Thanks for your support on this issue.

With best regards

Hello @septero,

At the moment it seems that the sitemaps are not accessible, so to get started we would recommend clearing the cache or setting the transient cache to false with the following filter: https://rankmath.com/kb/filters-hooks-api-developer/#enable-disable-sitemap-cache

We also noticed some issues with the code, where you are passing values to get_date_modified() that are not accepted as you can see from the function details here: https://woocommerce.wp-a2z.org/oik_api/wc_productget_date_modified/

Regarding the setup of multiple files, we would recommend that you check the way we do it in our plugin on this file: https://github.com/rankmath/seo-by-rank-math/blob/master/includes/modules/sitemap/providers/class-post-type.php

Please note that highly customized code is outside the scope of our support so you might need to hire a developer if you don’t feel confident enough handling this on your own.

Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any other questions.

Hi,

Thanks for reply.

Sitemaps are working again. In functions.php file I have added the code from the link: https://rankmath.com/kb/filters-hooks-api-developer/#enable-disable-sitemap-cache

After clearing the sitemap cache according to the instructions: https://i.rankmath.com/pipRDp, the dates in the “Last Modification Time” column on default (and custom) products sitemap were changed to the current datex (they are not loaded from the product pages, see sample sitemap: https://techprofi.pl/product-sitemap1.xml). How to restore the correct modification dates for products? For example sitemap for pages have correct timestamps (https://techprofi.pl/page-sitemap.xml).

Regarding the custom sitemap I have improved the code. It turned out that instead of ‘lastmod’ there should be ‘mod’ in the code. Dates started showing up.

When it comes to showing multiple sitemap files in index site, I’ll probably leave it alone. The important thing is that I can access specific pages of the divided sitemap.

With best regards

Hello @septero,

The last modified date in the products sitemap comes from the latest modified product and the case of your website it seems that something is setting the last modified date of the latest product to be the current time and date.

When we checked the source code of the product in question we could see the updated_time was the same date that the plugin added in the last modified date of the sitemap.

That data is taken directly from the database inside the posts table so it’s not something that is being changed by our plugin.

The same applies to the custom sitemaps.

Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any other questions.