sitemap

INTERNAL_KEY: '_sitemap'

What it does

The sitemap module emits /sitemap.xml from your built pages. In single-language mode, one flat sitemap. With multilang active and more than one language configured, one sitemap per language at /<lang>/sitemap.xml plus a sitemap index at /sitemap.xml that points at each.

Any page can opt out from its front matter. The module resolves every page's entry once, into a computed _sitemap, and its own template reads that rather than deciding anything itself. You set sitemap; _sitemap is what Baseline made of it, and it is readable from any template as a summary of where the page stands.

The sitemap is rendered through virtual templates: synthetic templates Baseline injects into the build, not files you write. They use Eleventy's normal collection access (collections.all) and the same data cascade your pages do.

Active when

options.sitemap is truthy. Defaults to true. Set sitemap: false to skip the module entirely.

Lifecycle

Build-time. Registers virtual templates: a single /sitemap.xml, or per-language sitemaps plus an index if multilang is active.
Cascade-time. Computed _sitemap resolves on every page from the cascade (its ignore, changefreq, priority and lastmod fields).

The sitemap virtual templates set _internal: true so they do not get a page context. They are emitted as XML, not HTML, and the head module skips them.

How it works

Compute _sitemap. Registered as eleventyComputed._sitemap. Resolves ignore, changefreq, priority and lastmod from cascade data, reading the author's sitemap key rather than writing to it.
Resolve language config. Reads settings.languages through normalizeLanguageMap, the same helper the multilang module uses.
Register virtual templates.
- Single-language: one template at /sitemap.xml. Loops collections.all, filters excluded pages, emits <urlset> with <loc>, optional <lastmod>, optional <changefreq>, optional <priority>.
- Multilingual: one template per language at <lang>/sitemap.xml, plus a sitemap index template at /sitemap.xml. Per-language sitemaps include <xhtml:link> alternates for every translation sibling, sourced from the translation map.

Each virtual template sets _internal: true so the page-context registry skips it (it is not a real page). It also sets eleventyExcludeFromCollections: true so the sitemap does not list itself.

Defaults

Sitemap output. /sitemap.xml in single-language mode, or /<lang>/sitemap.xml plus /sitemap.xml (the index) when multilang is active with more than one language. A multilang site with a single language in the map keeps the flat sitemap.
Computed _sitemap. Every page receives { ignore, changefreq, priority, lastmod }. ignore is sitemap.ignore: true or the page's resolved noindex, changefreq and priority come from your front matter and are otherwise unset, and lastmod is sitemap.lastmod or the page's resolved modified date, absent when neither resolves. This is the mechanism, not a summary of it: the template reads this object and decides nothing of its own.
Exclusion rules. A page is dropped when its resolved ignore is true, when eleventyExcludeFromCollections: true, or when it has no url (a permalink: false record). ignore folds in noindex: true, seo.noindex: true (which wins over it, including when it overrides it to false) and sitemap.ignore: true. settings.noindex empties the whole file in one go.
changefreq and priority are emitted only when your front matter carries them under sitemap. Neither has a default, because a guessed value is a claim about your content that Baseline cannot make.

Settings

The sitemap module reads four keys on the settings argument. Full shape on Site settings.

Key	Type	Used for
`settings.url`	`string`	Building absolute `<loc>` entries.
`settings.noindex`	`boolean`	When `true`, the sitemap file is still written but lists nothing.
`settings.languages`	`object`	Drives per-language partitioning when multilang is active. Read through the same normalisation as the multilang module.
`settings.defaultLocale` or `settings.defaultLanguage`	`string`	Which language files under the unprefixed URLs. Resolved through the same resolver the multilang module uses, so either key works. Without one, partitioning does not happen and you get the single flat sitemap.

Options

Option	Type	Default	Meaning
`sitemap`	`boolean`	`true`	Activate the module. Set `false` to skip it.

Per-page sitemap controls

Set these in front matter:

sitemap:
  ignore: true # exclude from sitemap (page still renders)
  changefreq: weekly
  priority: 0.8
  lastmod: 2026-01-15

noindex: true in front matter, or under seo:, excludes the page from the sitemap and (because the head module reads the same field) emits a robots meta tag.
sitemap.ignore: true is sitemap-only exclusion. The page still renders and search engines can still index it.
eleventyExcludeFromCollections: true keeps the page out of all collections, including collections.all, so the sitemap never sees it.

lastmod uses sitemap.lastmod if you set it; otherwise the modified date Baseline resolved for the page, which is the last commit to touch the file unless your front matter says otherwise. Both arrive through _sitemap as finished strings, so the template formats nothing. See Dates.

Multilingual mode

When the multilang module is active and settings.languages has more than one entry, the layout switches automatically:

/en/sitemap.xml, /nl/sitemap.xml, etc.: one per language, listing only that language's pages plus hreflang alternates.
/sitemap.xml: a sitemap index pointing at each per-language sitemap.

Tips

Set settings.noindex: true to empty the sitemap (useful for staging environments). The file is still written; it just lists no pages.
Search engines treat changefreq and priority as hints. Set them sparingly, only where you actually have a useful answer.
Provide lastmod in front matter when you want to override the freshness signal. Without one, the resolved modified date is used, and a page with no resolvable date gets no <lastmod> element rather than a wrong one.
URLs are absolutized via Eleventy's HtmlBasePlugin using settings.url and pathPrefix. Keep settings.url origin-only (no trailing path), and use pathPrefix for sub-path deployments.

Peer deps

None.