New Sitemap Generator Tool from Google

One thing that Google didn’t make perfectly clear in its Google Blog announcement was that you need server-level administrative access in order to install and use this tool. (Instead, they say it’s a “server plug-in”, which can be confusing to a lot of people.)

For those who just looked at what I said and went “Huh? He just said what?” I’ll repeat it again. You either have to be a server administrator or know one in order to install this. If you don’t have that kind of access to the server, you’ll be better off using another sitemap generator program (or writing them out by hand).

ah… so it is impossible to use it if I have no FTP account in my blog.

You would need root access to the server, so FTP would not be enough. You’d have to be a server administrator to use this. But it would handle all the sites on the server, so separate scripts would become unnecessary.

It seems a valuable tool for forums, social networking sites and large hosts, it generates sitemaps out of the server traffic log and pings ‘em around, and you can change settings per site on the host. Yet to owners of hosted sites it has no practical use, maybe once cPanel and DirectAdmin integrate it we’ll hear about it.