Hey guys: This may be like — so 2011 — but I’m wondering if you generate sitemaps for your sites any more? I owned this program called A1 Sitemap Generator which worked great. But my version is old, and I’ve not bothered installing on a computer in awhile.
Do sitemaps provide a tangible benefit? I used to run mine religiously, and really the best thing it did was give me peace of mind that my site was crawlable plus it helped detect broken links.
Thanks,
Steve
Re: Who Generates Sitemaps Anymore?
I still use 'em, though my theme(s) seem to have a sitemap page, that autogenerates/updates, with each post.
Re: Who Generates Sitemaps Anymore?
I do and I love them! I submit them weekly to Bing and Google. 
Re: Who Generates Sitemaps Anymore?
From what I’ve been reading, sitemaps still count when it comes to getting indexed better, but most importantly to me - how you want to be indexed. As far as whether they’re completely necessary or not, who knows. We never get the straight-up goods from Google anyway. I think it more than likely helps a site get indexed faster with more urls in the SERPs. But again, who knows. Not everything we read on the net is gospel.
For my sites that aren’t powered with WP I use http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ The free version allows up to 500 urls. I don’t know if I’ll ever want to index more than that, but if so the upgrades are pretty cheap with that application. A friend of mine uses the paid version and it’s a pretty cool program. With a lot of option control.
For WP powered sites I use either the XML Sitemap plugin or Yoast. I’ve been experimenting with a Yoast sitemap, being a bit more choosy on what goes into the file. The results have been interesting. WP is renowned for creating a lot of duplicate content on a blog, so I believe spending more time on a sitemap when running a WP blog is a good idea. Then again I’m partially OCD, so keep that in mind. 
Re: Who Generates Sitemaps Anymore?
I see. Thanks for y’alls input — I’ll probably purchase the new A1 Sitemap Generator version then.
Steve