Yoast / Yoast/developer

Documentation: The "Exclude a taxonomy term from sitemap" code doesn't do anything

Open
#340 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Dominant language
JavaScript
Stars
15
Forks
23
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Description

Please give us a description of the issue

On https://github.com/Yoast/developer/blob/main/docs/features/xml-sitemaps/api.md you give a function for removing taxonomy terms from site maps.

I've aadded the following code to my theme functions.php:


function sitemap_exclude_terms( $terms ) {
return [208];
}

add_filter( 'wpseo_exclude_from_sitemap_by_term_ids', 'sitemap_exclude_terms' );

Posts in category ID 208 are still appearing on my post-sitemap.xml. I know it's not a caching issue because I subsequently added a test post and it appeared in the sitemap immediately. I have tested this with numerous different categories and with including single or multiple IDs in the array.

The code should probably either be corrected or removed.

  • [X ] I've read and understood the contribution guidelines.
  • [X ] I've searched for any related issues and avoided creating a duplicate issue.

UPDATE: The only way I was able to actually successfully filter the sitemap was using the wpseo_sitemap_entry filter. Filters I tried that didn't seem to ever run: wpseo_exclude_from_sitemap_by_term_ids, wpseo_sitemap_exclude_post, and a query with wpseo_sitemap_posts_query. Some sort of clearer documentation might have saved me some time.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start with docs/features/xml-sitemaps/api.md and review the documented wpseo_exclude_from_sitemap_by_term_ids example against the reported behavior. Investigate the related filters named in the issue, including wpseo_sitemap_entry, then update or remove the guidance so the documented way to exclude taxonomy terms is accurate and testable.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
wordpress
Domain
documentation
Issue type
Documentation
Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.