How do you index 'jump menus"?
« on: October 13, 2009, 06:10:43 PM »
It's nice to find this site- I don't know a lot about sitemaps, and the sitemap generator and forum have been in incredible help!

Although there are other issues that are more pressing, I have a long term question that I haven't been able to answer...ie can sitemap generator index a site that consists mainly of jump menus? If so, I haven't figured out how to get it to work.

Otherwise, I'm assuming we will have to hand code the sitemap?

Thanks in advance!
ZS
Re: How do you index 'jump menus"?
« Reply #1 on: October 14, 2009, 01:17:10 AM »
Hello,

that depends on how your "jump menu" is organized. In case if it's not based entirely on javascript it should work, i.e. there must be html links to your pages like <a href="..."></a>
Re: How do you index 'jump menus"?
« Reply #2 on: October 14, 2009, 09:18:24 PM »
Thansk for the input- Here's a copy..

I don't think it's java, but I also can't imagine how a site builder would turn this into real URLs unless this is a standard form-

 <form name="form" id="form">
              <select name="jumpMenu" id="jumpMenu">
                <option value="North_Carolina/North_Carolina_Home.html">North Carolina</option>
                <option value="Tennessee/Tennessee_Home.html">Tennessee</option>
              </select>
              <input type="button" name="go_button" id= "go_button" value="Go" onClick="MM_jumpMenuGo('jumpMenu','parent',0)">
            </form>

So should this menu be indexable?
Thanks!
ZS
Re: How do you index 'jump menus"?
« Reply #3 on: October 16, 2009, 12:22:24 AM »
This is an html form and not a link, you should duplicate your menu items with plain links to get them indexed.
Re: How do you index 'jump menus"?
« Reply #4 on: October 19, 2009, 07:45:35 PM »
Can you point me to any sites that do this well?  I can't image we are reinventing the wheel on this one.  Any site that has many pages on a jump menu would hit this same problem wouldn't they?

The reason we're concerned with the 'list all of the URL' approach is they will end up with literally thousands of permeations of city/state/location URLS. It would be ugly and it be really hard to maintain.

 Also trying to image how to do this in an aesthetically pleasing way. The jump menu makes it easy to find and hides all of the unselected URLs.

Is it possible that we should use a differnt Jump menu widget? One that is transpratent to ssitempay gernator?

Thanks for the input!
ZS