Custom Website Sitemap

Our Sitemap Generator is framework-agnostic. It crawls your custom-coded website—whether built with raw HTML, PHP, Python, or Ruby—to extract all live links and generate a perfectly formatted XML sitemap.

How to Use This Tool

Enter Custom Website URL

Input the homepage URL of your custom coded website URL.

Analyze Site

Click generate to let our crawler map your Custom Website architecture, including posts, pages, and products.

Review URLs

Check the discovered URLs. We exclude default Custom Website system pages and non-indexable routes.

Choose Output

Select either a standard 'Single Sitemap' or 'Sitemap Index' format.

Copy or Download

Save the generated XML file directly to your device.

Recommended Action

Upload the sitemap to your root directory (if allowed by Custom Website) and submit it via Google Search Console.

Check Custom Sitemap

How Custom Handles Sitemaps

Unlike monolithic CMS platforms like WordPress or Shopify, custom-coded websites do not have built-in sitemap generation unless your development team explicitly coded a script to build one.

Developers often write database queries to output XML endpoints, but maintaining these scripts as the site's architecture evolves can be tedious and prone to errors.

What BuildSitemap Checks

We crawl your site from the outside in. We start at the homepage and follow every internal `<a href>` tag we can find.

This approach is perfect for custom websites because it maps the exact routing structure your users experience, bypassing backend complexities. We verify that every link returns a 200 OK status code, ensuring no broken URLs make it into the final XML.

URLs We Discover

Static HTML files (/about.html)
Dynamic routing endpoints (/user/123)
REST API endpoints (if accidentally linked)
Asset directories (if exposed via index pages)

URLs to Exclude

API endpoints meant only for AJAX calls
Staging subdomains
Database-driven search result pages (?q=search-term)
Admin dashboards and secure routes

Custom Sitemap Structure

For custom websites, the structure of your sitemap is entirely up to you. However, organization is key for SEO.

By using our Structured Sitemap option, the generator will attempt to bucket your URLs based on their path segments (e.g., grouping all `/articles/*` together and all `/services/*` together). This makes debugging indexation in Google Search Console much easier.

Common Custom Problems

Custom routing frameworks (like Laravel or Express) sometimes handle trailing slashes inconsistently, resulting in both `/page` and `/page/` being indexed.

Failing to set up a cron job to keep a custom sitemap script updated, leading to stale XML files.

Hardcoding absolute URLs using a staging environment domain instead of the production domain.

How to Use Your Generated Sitemap

Using our generated sitemap is simple:

Download the generated sitemap.xml file.
Upload it to the root directory of your web server (e.g., via SFTP to `/var/www/html` or your equivalent public folder).
Ensure your web server (Nginx/Apache) is configured to serve `.xml` files correctly.
Submit the direct URL to Google Search Console.

Example Custom Output

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <url>
    <loc>https://custom.example.com/services</loc>
    <lastmod>2026-09-21</lastmod>
    <priority>1.0</priority>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>https://custom.example.com/portfolio/case-study-one</loc>
    <lastmod>2026-09-20</lastmod>
    <priority>0.8</priority>
  </url>
</urlset>

Best Practice Checklist

Enforce strict trailing slash policies in your web server configImplement canonical tags on all dynamic pagesAdd a reference to your sitemap in your robots.txt fileAutomate sitemap generation via API or cron for large databases

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need a sitemap for a custom HTML website?

Yes. Even if your site is just a few static HTML files, an XML sitemap helps Google discover them faster and understand your site's structure.

How do I update the sitemap when I add a new page?

If you don't have a backend script generating it dynamically, you must regenerate the sitemap using a tool like BuildSitemap every time you add a new page, and re-upload it to your server.

Can BuildSitemap crawl Single Page Applications (SPAs)?

Currently, our crawler relies on static HTML links (`<a href>`). If your SPA relies entirely on client-side routing without server-side rendering (SSR) or pre-rendering, crawling might be limited.

How do I host the generated sitemap on my custom server?

Simply download the generated sitemap.xml file and upload it to the public root directory of your web server (e.g., `public_html`, `/var/www/html`) using FTP or SSH.

Does BuildSitemap follow robots.txt rules?

Yes, our external crawler respects the robots.txt directives of your custom website. If you disallow a path, it will not be included in the sitemap.

What is the best way to handle dynamic URLs in custom apps?

If you have thousands of dynamic routes (e.g., user profiles), it is best to write a server-side script (e.g., in Node.js, PHP, or Python) to query your database and generate the XML dynamically on demand.

Related Tools

XML Sitemap Generator

Generate a standard XML sitemap.