# "Site maps" are outdated for websites? What should I ask for? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 8, 2021, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/site-maps-are-outdated-for-websites-what-should-i-ask-for/929990 "2021-01-08T02:17:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![CairoCarol](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cairocarol/32/3825_2.png) [@CairoCarol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CairoCarol)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2021, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/site-maps-are-outdated-for-websites-what-should-i-ask-for/929990/1 "2021-01-08T02:17:51Z")
Th organization I work with maintains a website that has a zillion pages, not all of which have ever been edited or updated. I’d like to go through and suggest improvements, but there is far too much material for me to realistically go through, and some of it is so old (descriptions of exhibitions from 5 years ago, for example) that it can be ignored. Anyway, I asked for a site map so that I could plan a strategic review of the site (while I think it’s great work by the untrained amateurs who designed it, it’s definitely not professional-level quality and it can be a bit hard to navigate). I was told that “they don’t do it that way any more” which seems odd to me, but I’m no techie, so I could be wrong. So my questions are as in the thread title: - Is it true that no one uses site maps for website design? - If so, is there a different term I could use so that the designers would know what I’m talking about? Thanks in advance. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2021, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/site-maps-are-outdated-for-websites-what-should-i-ask-for/929990/2 "2021-01-08T03:43:27Z")
I’ve heard the term “wire frame” but I’m not sure that’s exactly equivalent. How about if you just ask “Where’s the list of what links to what?” ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2021, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/site-maps-are-outdated-for-websites-what-should-i-ask-for/929990/3 "2021-01-08T03:51:38Z")
Do you have access to the backend of this site or are you just submitting suggestions to be implemented? If you have access, poke around and there’s a decent chance you’ll find a site map option that’s currently off. Turn it on and do what you need to do. At the very least, the back end will likely have some form of a list of all the pages. Otherwise you might just have to use some type of brute force method. For example, from the home page, click the first link (maybe make a note of it if the various links aren’t in some obvious order). On that page, click on the first link until you drill all the way down to a page with no links (or no links beyond headers/footers/CSS type stuff). Review that page, back up one page and go to the second link you see and do the same thing. Kinda like a search tree. ETA, if some of it is so old it can be ignored, can it be deleted? It might save you some work if you ask them to delete all the obsolete pages so you’re not wasting your time even clicking on them, much less reading them. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2021, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/site-maps-are-outdated-for-websites-what-should-i-ask-for/929990/4 "2021-01-08T03:53:18Z")
I don’t see site maps on modern websites. That’s the right term, but it’s a dead practice. There are SEO sitemaps that are sometimes used. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2021, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/site-maps-are-outdated-for-websites-what-should-i-ask-for/929990/5 "2021-01-08T03:53:54Z")
> [@Kent\_Clark](#): > > I’ve heard the term “wire frame” but I’m not sure that’s exactly equivalent. My understanding, from doing work with our UX team, is that that’s correct – a wireframe is a mock-up of the architecture of a particular page (where graphics and fillable fields are placed, where links are placed), rather than a traditional map of the interconnections of different pages. ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2021, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/site-maps-are-outdated-for-websites-what-should-i-ask-for/929990/6 "2021-01-08T03:57:57Z")
> [@Max\_S](#): > > I don’t see site maps on modern websites. Just because you don’t see them doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I’m not at work right now to see if my business site (though Wix) has the option to turn it on, but it made me wonder if there’s any programs or websites you can use to crawl the site and list all the pages. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2021, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/site-maps-are-outdated-for-websites-what-should-i-ask-for/929990/7 "2021-01-08T03:59:09Z")
> [@Joey\_P](#): > > Otherwise you might just have to use some type of brute force method. eg, `wget -knpr [url]` ~Max ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2021, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/site-maps-are-outdated-for-websites-what-should-i-ask-for/929990/8 "2021-01-08T04:01:50Z")
> [@Joey\_P](#): > > Otherwise you might just have to use some type of brute force method. For example, from the home page, click the first link Fortunately, there are computer programs that can brute-force create a site map for you: [Create your Google Sitemap Online - XML Sitemaps Generator (xml-sitemaps.com)](https://www.xml-sitemaps.com/) (That calls itself “XML Sitemaps Generator”, but it can also generate a plain text sitemap) ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2021, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/site-maps-are-outdated-for-websites-what-should-i-ask-for/929990/9 "2021-01-08T04:02:33Z")
No idea what that means. However, I just ran two sites (my own and another) through [this](https://www.xml-sitemaps.com/) website and it spit out site maps in a few minutes. ETA Ninja’d because I sat and watched it. ---
**Author:** ![Francis\_Vaughan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/francis_vaughan/32/3093_2.png) [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2021, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/site-maps-are-outdated-for-websites-what-should-i-ask-for/929990/10 "2021-01-08T05:39:14Z")
The only reason I can think of for not being able to build a site-map is when much of the content is dynamically generated. There are all manner of fancy ways of generating or rendering content that are not compatible with simply walking a tree of pages. In the extreme there is just a single top level page with lots of javascript/typescript that performs all sorts of evil magic and talks to a back-end to generate stuff on demand. So serious exploitation of HTML5 capability could be consistent with “they don’t do it that way any more”. Which is a pity if it stops the generation of a site map. A site map is simple politeness towards the user. ---
**Author:** ![CairoCarol](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cairocarol/32/3825_2.png) [@CairoCarol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CairoCarol)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2021, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/site-maps-are-outdated-for-websites-what-should-i-ask-for/929990/11 "2021-01-08T05:58:42Z")
> [@Joey\_P](#): > > ETA, if some of it is so old it can be ignored, can it be deleted? A reasonable question. It’s worth keeping, just as you keep your tax filings for a few years. A lot of it provide easy access to institutional history - most site visitors won’t care about the specific dates/artists we featured a few years ago, but _I_ might, if I were writing a grant proposal where it mattered.