Currently testing the A1 Sitemap Generator, but I am not certain how I can add the time / date parameter.  Where can I choose the options / data on the program so the time / date can be added?

Hi,

Check this help page about last modified

Be sure to let me know if above does not solve your problem. I am pondering about adding even more ways to detect date/time beyond the 3 I already use (http header, meta tag, URL analysis) !

Thanks - I had found that part, but I did not see a way to have the program add the time.

I went to the Create Sitemap tab, and then XML Sitemap Options.  I do not have any of the override features clicked.

Right now, it is creating:
<url><loc>http://www.example.com/</loc><changefreq>daily</changefreq><priority>0.9</priority></url>
but I would like:
<url><loc>http://www.milehighmerchantaccounts.com/</loc><lastmod>2010-12-16T23:44:50+00:00</lastmod><changefreq>daily</changefreq><priority>1.00</priority></url>
I did play around with the override lastmod with chosen date/time and override with GMT timezone modifier.  When I checked override lastmod with chosen date/time, the date / time that was in the box appeared.  But I could not figure out how to get the program to generate the time (from the server) and enter that into the XML sitemap.

For A1 Sitemap Generator to pull the date/time from the server, the server has to provide the date/time in one of the 3 ways mentioned in earlier mentioned article (http header, meta tag, URL naming pattern)

The reason A1SG does not retrieve the date/time from your server is that your server does not provide it in any shape (at least not one A1SG understands). I just checked some of your pages with Firefox, and your server send neither http header last modified, meta tag last modified, nor has date patterns in their URLs.

I am considering adding a 4rth method to A1SG. Trying to find dates inside entire content. However, not even that would work for your website I think. But if you have any idea,s feel free to let me know!

(nyways, seeing you supplied your website address, I will check this before 3.0.4 release.

Just curious - is there some ASP code that could be added to the pages so the program could read the last updated time? 

I don't know if this is something that could be also added via the server as well - anything that I could ask them?  I also remembered that I had a page that might help: http://www.milehighmerchantaccounts.com/basic-components.asp - I don't know if you were able to tell if all these components were installed but hopefully this might help some.

I don't know if this would help more, I used GSiteCrawler on my old PC (since it still has my registration code).  On Windows 7, it won't except my code unfortunately and it looks like the program might not be supported any longer.  It seemed to work as far as I could tell.

I saw the code for the PHP, so if you do have an ASP, I would be more than interested in trying to add that to see if it helps, etc.


Thanks again!!

* And you are positive you have not changed website to e.g. ASP (from e.g. HTML)
If memory serves me, e.g. Apache will send last-modified for a HTML file, but not e.g. PHP

* It did not just insert *now* into the field?
(or some other predefined value?)

I checked your website (random page) with FireFox and inspected both headers and meta tags. The info wasn't there. Still, of course, if GSiteCrawler had a satisfactory solution for last-modified, I am of course interested! I do doubt it though

I have pondered about making checksum tests between (re)crawls... But decided against it as many dynamic pages have subtle changes on each reload. Data would still be wrong for majority of pages then + the first scans. But of course such a "is modified" algorithm could be improved upon... If actually an (ex-)competitor implemented this, then I have to do so

Anyways, I will try expand the help page with some more info/examples. Give me a day or two

Just re-ran GSite - it uses the date / time that I am running it, that is about it.  What I usually did was just add a new page when needed and changed the time / date myself.  It had been such a long time since I last ran it I had to re-check exactly what it did do.

I am using ASP on all the pages.  What I do, is use a re-write function on there.  On the site above, I use an .htaccess file (a new version of the ISAPI re-write)
RewriteRule ^merchant-account$ /merchant-account.asp [NC,L]
On the blog, I use an rely on httpd.ini (it is version 2 of the ISAPI re-write and they are on the same server (I believe)
RewriteRule /2010/12/you-are-approved-for-a-merchant-account-in-less-than-24-hours /permalink.asp?id=275

I updated the last modified help page with ASP and ASP.Net documentation. With that, you can probably find the last bits using Google

By the way, you can mass edit last modified values in A1SG. Just multi select them, and change and save new date/time last modified value

Thanks - I will try just adding the same date across the board for now to add that information.

If you get a new update that might be able to read the information or a piece of ASP code that could be added for the program to read it, let me know and i will be happy to test it

In the help page (linked earlier) I added some ASP and ASP.Net code samples!

ASP example: Set hard coded last-modified:
<% Response.AddHeader "Last-modified","Mon, 01 Jan 2000 11:22:33 GMT" %>

ASP.Net functions you can check documentation on:
Response.Cache.SetLastModified(DateTime date);

Response.Cache.SetLastModifiedFromFileDependencies();
Response.AddFileDependancy(string filename);


As I use Apache/PHP myself, it's hard for me to provide more specific example than that But if I stumple across something (or you get it working and post the code here) I will of course update the help file!

Merry holidays

I have not forgotten about this - just been sick for a few days.  I have been asking on another forum to see what might be done as well.

Okay! Do let me know your findings, so I can include more complete code samples in help!

Until hen, I will need look into some algorithm that, without storing entire content of old pages, can determine/guess by content analysis if a page has been been updated since last scan. (There are some problems doing it this way though which will prevent results from being "high-quality", but it would probably be considered sufficient in most cases.)

Happy New Year

I did find one that someone suggested (but did not seem to work)
<%
Dim FSO, File
Set FSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set File = FSO.GetFile("filename")
Response.Write File.DateLastModified
Set File = Nothing
Set FSO = Nothing
%>
Just in case.  It might not even be possible.  I received an error message and I think it was because of where the code was placed.  I think they said it would need to be at the beginning if I remember right but I did not have an ASP include file in that area across the board.

I had actually been just adding the URLs as I put in a new post and changed the times manually on the correct pages.  One thing I did remember, I have an ad system running in the right column, so I don't know if that would affect the date(s).

And a very Happy and Prosperous 2011 to you and your company!  Thanks again for the support on here.  I'll keep an eye out and hopefully we will find something

The code also looks a bit wrong


You need ASP code for 4 things:
1) give file name path to active .asp script file
2) extract last-modified datetime info from that file
3) convert the datetime to a string suitable for...
4) output as HTTP header using Response.AddHeader

(And yes, HTTP headers should be output as first thing before anything else!)

Those using ASP regularly should have it available for you. You could try stackoverflow.com

I might also try Google for it again, but the help page already contains the best I found when I am not currently able to test it myself. I will look into installing IIS.

Anyways, otherwise I will begin work on building content changes detection into A1SG. Then the problem will be solved for good for websites like yours! It's probably the best solution

Happy New Years to you as well