WordPress just released 5.5 version and one of main new was announced default sitemap included in this release.
It seams great news. Especially for whose who are installing their first website and don’t know anything about sitemaps. But for everybody else it doesn’t look like useful feature. Why?
Default WordPress 5.5 sitemap file is very basic and it has more disadvantages than advantages.
WordPress 5.5 sitemap pros
I can name only one – it is good sitemap exists by default, because a lot of WP newbies forget to install it or don’t know about it anything at all.
WordPress 5.5 sitemap cons
WP 5.5 sitemap cons list is much longer.
- It includes everything on your web site. There is no way to disable categories, tabs, users or other archives from showing up on sitemap from dashboard.
- You can’t disable WP sitemap from your website dashboard
- All WP sitemap management can be done only in source code at the moment. So you can’t do it if you are not enough technical savvy.
How to disable WordPress 5.5 default sitemap
You don’t need to do anything if you are using Yoast SEO plugin. The latest version of Yoast plugin disables WP default sitemap by default.
You should check with your sitemap plugins developers if you are using different plugin than Yoast.
Here is a line you need to put into your functions.php file if you are not using any sitemap plugins and want to remove default WordPress sitemap functionality:
add_filter( 'wp_sitemaps_enabled', '__return_false');
I am sure it won’t take long for new sitemap plugins to appear which will manage WordPress sitemap properly from dashboard.
For know you can take a look to all available functions and what you can do with this site map https://make.wordpress.org/core/2020/07/22/new-xml-sitemaps-functionality-in-wordpress-5-5/.
کولرنیو
Hi, this function code is good, but it does not delete, it just hides. You must enter another code to delete the sitemap.
add_action (‘init’, function () {remove_action (‘init’, ‘wp_sitemaps_get_server’);}, 5);
Jens
You can disable for example only authors from sitemap with this code:
/*
* disable authors sitemap, generated automatically in 5.5
*/
function remove_author_category_pages_from_sitemap($provider, $name)
{
if (‘users’ === $name) {
return false;
}
return $provider;
}
add_filter(‘wp_sitemaps_add_provider’, ‘remove_author_category_pages_from_sitemap’, 10, 2);