Sitemap Generator Forum

I just discovered what the problem was for the "lastmod" date and time appearing in the sitemap.xml file. But even when I fix that problem, the generator still returns the UTC time zone instead of my time zone or the hosting server's time zone. After searching through all this forum's threads, I see that you have told user's there is no way to change the UTC to another time zone. WHAT? Why do you even have the "Use server's response" setting in the attribute settings? I cannot believe I have spent all this time chasing this down only to learn that your generator will not allow it. Have I misunderstood something?

Hello,

all times are specified in GMT timezone according with sitemaps specification.

GMT and UTC are the same my friend in case you didn't know. The "Last modification" configuration setting under the Attributes tab is meaningless if a user chooses, "use server's response". In fact the little help notation beneath those options reads, "You can let the generator set this field from your server's response headers..." is false, or misleading. And, your help to me in this thread has been completely misleading. I have been asking you all along how to get the generator to use the actual "lastmod" date and time from my hosting server, and you have been leading me along all this time to believe that this was possible as long as the server's headers are being supplied correctly. Simply not true. Please tell the authors of this generator they need to fix this because I have now spent many hours trying to make this work only to find out it doesn't work. Furthermore, when someone like me asks a question for help like my first post in this thread, your response should categorically be, "Well, even if you choose the "use server's response" setting, AND your hosting servers provide a "Last-modification" response in their header for each page, the XML Sitemap Generator will not provide the correct  "lastmod" date and time in the results, unless you live in the GMT time zone. We have been asked to provide a time zone option in our tool for several years, but we have seen no need to do that." Your responses to me in this thread however have been a waste of my time and your time sir.

Oleg - You may be thinking... "Why is this guy getting so bent out of shape over something so simple as the last modification setting?" It's because Google, who has become the largest search engine in the world and has cornered the market with close to 70% of all searches performed on the internet worldwide, only pays attention to the "lastmod" parameter in sitemaps. They don't even consider "priority" or "changefreq". So, when a business is trying to improve their ranking on Google, it is important for your software to do what it says it can do. Not just have a setting which does nothing except misleads your customers.

Do you mean the timezone for the "lastmod" attribute in xml sitemap or html sitemap?

In xml sitemap it's always converted to GMT (+0) zone, like: "2018-09-17T03:30:23+00:00".

In html sitemap there is no option currently to change the timezone, although it's designed for website visitors and not search engines. We will consider adding this in future updates.
Optionally, you can modify generator/pages/mods/sitemap_tpl.html file to manually change it or remove that line:
<span>Last updated: <TVAR LASTUPDATE><br />

The line you provided appears to be for the sitemap.html file; I do not use your generator for that purpose. If there any other line that can be modified or added so that the generator returns my timezone instead of GMT? Are their any other files where the code can be manually modified or added so that the generator returns my timezone (-5) instead of GMT (+0)?

Hello,

currently there is no setting to change timezone or date format for xml sitemap files.

Oleg- You have been suggesting for more than two years that you might add the option to configure the time zone in a future version of the xml generator. There have been a number of people requesting/complaining about this over the years. How about if I pay you to do it, that way you don't have to procrastinate. Thanks.