If you are a WordPress power blogger, you probably have written a large number of posts and pages. If you are like me, and do a lot reading and research in addition to blogging, topics become so familiar that you confuse yourself about which ones you have already written about, which posts are in draft, and which are scheduled. Even though I use the WordPress Editorial Calendar Widget to manage my blog posts, and it gives a good monthly visual, it doesn’t show me whole picture (the pages). Enter a simple WordPress plugin that I stumbled upon while helping a client earlier this week.
The Story
The other day, a client that hosts its website with me asked how they might be able to get a listing of all the content on their blog; pages and posts in the same list. I immediately thought of a Sitemap plugin like Google XML Sitemaps. While researching the Sitemap plugins, WP Sitemap Page came to my attention. It turned out to be the lightest plugin that met all of their criteria. In addition to generating a current list, the client wanted to view the list online in order to be able to click on the title of the post or page to preview the content. They wanted a simple list, like an indented hierarchical list, that could be printed and then use to check off posts and pages as they were reviewed.
WP Sitemap Page lists ALL the published posts and pages. It does not list draft posts or pages, nor scheduled posts. Pages are listed in alphabetic order by Title. Child pages are listed under the Parent page in alphabetical order by Title.
Posts are listed by Category. Within each Category, the posts are listed in reverse chronological order (LIFO – standard blog order). I did not test these features, but, according to the creator, the plugin will display custom post types and taxonomies, has a class assigned for styling with CSS, and has the ability to exclude some pages, and a few more things.
WP Sitemap Page can be downloaded at the WordPress Plugins Directory. It installs like every other plugin, and to generate a list of posts and pages, you simply add a shortcode (in TEXT mode only) to the page on which you want the list to display.
Installing WP Sitemap Page Plugin
- In the WordPress Dashboard, roll over the master menu item Plugins
- Click Add New on the drop down menu
- When the Plugins page displays, type “WP Sitemap Page” into the search box
- Click Install Now in the box that shows the plugin by Tony Archambeau
- Once installed, activate it just like any other plugin
- Create the page in which you want the list to appear
- Switch to TEXT mode
- Add the shortcode [wp-sitemap-page]
Caution
If you have excluded some posts or pages from displaying on your website, they will be listed on this page. One way to keep them hidden is to keep the generated sitemap page in “draft” mode and only view it when logged in – Or the page can be assigned a Visibility of “Private”. If the generated sitemap page is used on the website as a sitemap for humans, then you’ll need to figure another scheme for keeping your excluded pages excluded.