Using the WordPress menu for a sitemap page

Today I had to research how to use WordPress’ Menu system as the basis for a sitemap page. In the past I used the “HTML Page Sitemap” plugin to turn the site’s pages and their hierarchies into a sitemap page. Today however I had to find a solution for a site that uses the hierarchies of the menus, but not the parent/child and ordering system of the pages themselves.
Let me cut to the end and share the best solution I found. The WP Realtime Sitemap plugin does exactly what I wanted and much more. The key to make it work for the above scenario is to do the following on the plugin’s setting page (after installation and activation):

  • Under the “Display Settings” header only the “Show Menu” option should be ON
  • Under the “Order Settings” header the 1st order should be “Menu”

I need to mention two more links as they were part of my research.

  • Last April Jean Galea wrote the “The Ultimate Guide to WordPress 3 Menus.” The “Building a Sitemap” section of the doc gives instruction exactly what the heading suggests.  He gave credit for the original developer of the idea, including the shortcode: CosmosLabs.
  • I also found a code snippet from last May on Snipplr.com for the same purpose. I didn’t test it, but it looks functional.

 

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