Sitemaps and Drafts

Control which pages end up in your sitemap, and let work-in-progress pages live alongside published ones without leaking into production. By the end you'll have per-page sitemap controls, a working noindex story, and a draft workflow that behaves differently in dev and build, the way you'd want.

Two terms used below:

• Sitemap index. The root sitemap.xml that lists per-language sitemaps when multilingual is on.
• Drafts preprocessor. The build-time hook Baseline registers to drop draft: true pages from production builds (and only from production builds).

What you will build

• Pages that appear in sitemap.xml, and pages that don't.
• Per-page sitemap controls: ignore, changefreq, priority, lastmod.
• Draft pages that render in dev and quietly disappear in production.

Prerequisites

• Baseline installed and loaded (defaults keep the sitemap on).
• Set settings.url to your production URL for correct sitemap and canonical links (use localhost while testing).
• package.json with "type": "module" and the dev/build scripts:

  {
  	"name": "simple-baseline-site",
  	"type": "module",
  	"scripts": {
  		"start": "rimraf dist/ && npx @11ty/eleventy --serve",
  		"build": "rimraf dist/ && cross-env ELEVENTY_ENV=production npx @11ty/eleventy"
  	}
  }

---

1) Ensure the sitemap module is on (default)

Sitemap is on by default, so the eleventy.config.js from the previous tutorial is enough - no new options needed:

import baseline, { config as baselineConfig } from '@apleasantview/eleventy-plugin-baseline';
import settings from './src/_data/settings.js';

/** @param {import("@11ty/eleventy").UserConfig} eleventyConfig */
export default async function (eleventyConfig) {
	eleventyConfig.addPlugin(
		baseline(settings, {
			head: {
				titleSeparator: ' | ',
				showGenerator: true
			}
		})
	);
}

export const config = baselineConfig;

2) Page with sitemap controls

Create src/content/pages/sitemap-demo.md:

---
title: 'Sitemap Demo'
slug: 'sitemap-demo'
description: 'Control sitemap entries.'
layout: 'layouts/base.njk'
sitemap:
  changefreq: 'weekly'
  priority: 0.7
  lastmod: 2024-01-01
---

This page stays in the sitemap with custom frequency, priority, and lastmod.

changefreq, priority, and lastmod are hints, not directives. Search engines treat them as suggestions, so adjust sparingly.

3) Noindex (site-wide and per-page)

Three knobs, in widening order of scope:

• Site-wide: set noindex: true in _data/settings.js. The whole sitemap is skipped.

• Per-page: set noindex: true in front matter. The page renders a robots noindex tag and drops out of the sitemap.

• Sitemap-only: use sitemap: { ignore: true } when the page should render normally but stay out of the sitemap.

  sitemap:
    ignore: true
  eleventyExcludeFromCollections: true

  Two flags, two scopes worth distinguishing:

  • sitemap: { ignore: true } removes the page from the sitemap; the page still renders.
  • eleventyExcludeFromCollections: true keeps the page out of collections, and (because the sitemap reads from collections) out of the sitemap too.

4) Drafts

Add draft: true in front matter:

draft: true

• In dev (npm start): drafts render normally.
• In build (npm run build, which sets ELEVENTY_ENV=production): drafts are skipped.
• Baseline registers its own drafts preprocessor. If you already have one, yours wins; Baseline's is guarded against double-registration.

5) Run and inspect

npm start

• Open pages normally.
• Check dist/sitemap.xml while dev runs. It's emitted, drafts included.
• Draft pages render in dev and show up in the dev sitemap. They drop out as soon as you build for production, since npm run build sets ELEVENTY_ENV=production.

6) Production build

Change URL in .env to an absolute URL. On a deployed site that's your real production URL; for this exercise, any absolute URL (e.g. https://www.example.com/) works to verify the output. Then run:

npm run build

Then inspect dist/sitemap.xml. A few things should be missing:

• Pages with sitemap.ignore: true.
• Every entry, if site-wide noindex: true is set.
• Anything marked draft: true.
• Reset URL in .env to "http://localhost:8080/".

7) Multilingual note

When multilingual is on, Baseline emits a per-language sitemap (/en/sitemap.xml, /nl/sitemap.xml, and so on) plus a sitemap index at the root. The per-page ignore, noindex, and draft rules apply to each entry just the same.

---

Next steps

• Keep settings.url accurate in production, and set pathPrefix if you deploy under a subpath.
• Use drafts freely for in-progress content. Just remember they reappear in dev.
• Set defaults at the data layer: _data/sitemap.js for site-wide sitemap defaults, or directory data (e.g. posts.11tydata.js) to apply sitemap settings across a folder.
• The sitemap module reference has the full option list.