Thread

LG Better Meta 1.7 appear to be more flexible and powerful (read: complex) than PYLO’s Sitemap Module. I understand LG Better Meta 1.7 layers its sitemaps feature over the core design.

Question to any who have evaluated both: why might one choose one over the other?

To the developers - do these products overlap tightly or do they address markedly different use cases?

This is not an idle question, since I will probably purchase one of them shortly.

hi russ, i personally haven’t tried out leevi’s better meta module, so can’t say for certain, but the recent addition of the sitemap generator looks like a nice feature.

whereas the better meta module is great for adding meta data, the pylo sitemap module concentrates solely on automating sitemap generation. the better meta module requires that you create your own xml file or template, as seen in the docs, whereas the sitemap module does this for you automatically. i think its much of a muchness really, if you need meta abilities then the better meta might be for you, but if you need a simple to setup and maintain sitemap then the sitemap module may be the one.

i’m not going to say which one you should go for. leevi is a fellow developer that i respect and he has some great add-ons. i do my best to innovate as well and provide regular updates and react to support questions as fast as possible. so whichever you choose i think you’ll be happy!

It is difficult for users (let alone developers) to speak professionally, yet graciously, about stuff that overlaps/competes. Surely this is a skill that we must (delightedly) master over the coming years?

I read this as follows:

If the focus is on straightforward, automated site-map generation - no fuss, no muss - yours might be the better way to go. LG Better Meta is more tweakable and, therefore, suitable for custom needs and edge cases. And, yes, it is the unquestioned solution for flat-out meta data management.

Ben - thank you so much.

you’re very welcome. good luck with your site and with your SEO!

Both modules come in handy at times, but the fact is that you do not need either of them. Custom fields and and an xml file takes care of it all. It really depends on your own knowledge of EE and what you want to achieve.

Do existing knowledge base or forum threads offer a home-brewed walk-through of a prototypical solution?

there are a few in the wiki

http://expressionengine.com/wiki/Google_Sitemaps/

Which only makes me think, “I’d rather put precious time towards creating custom fields for the application, rather than create sitemaps by hand”, since 40 bucks for either product = a percentage of one hour of time better leveraged elsewise. Which is kinda the idea behind creating these modules, eh?

I can give you a bit of an overview of LG Better Meta in regards to the sitemap functionality.

LG Better Meta allows you to add per entry meta including priority and change frequency. You can also assign defaults for these values on a per weblog basis.

The sitemap generator automatically creates a sitemap file for you and pings the major sitemaps. Ben will be able to tell you more how the urls are constructed.

LG Better Meta gives you the ability to create completley unique urls for your sitemap file which is created as an EE template using the following code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset >
    {exp:lg_better_meta_pi:entries
        weblog="blog"
        disable="categories|custom_fields|category_fields|customer_fields|member_data|pagination|trackbacks"
        dynamic="off"
        rdf="off"
        status="not closed"
    }
    <url>
        <loc>http://test.com/blog/post/{entry_id}/{url_title}/</loc>
        <lastmod>{edit_date format="%Y-%m-%d"}</lastmod>
        <changefreq>{change_frequency}</changefreq>
        {priority}</priority>
    </url>
    {/exp:lg_better_meta_pi:entries}
</urlset>

If you want to ping a server everytime an entry is published you can use EE’s inbuilt functionality for this.

If you want to add custom pages to the generated sitemap you can just add them to the template.

Hope that helps

Does any/either of these work with the discussion module? (adds URLs from the discussion forum)