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Why XML sitemaps matters for a hardware store
9 Feb 2025
How a hardware store deals with XML sitemaps — and what usually goes wrong.
The problem: a tag manager container with leftover pixels. This breaks XML sitemaps for a hardware store.
WordPress can handle XML sitemaps with a plugin. But the plugin adds JavaScript, a dashboard, and a support ticket when it conflicts with the next update. We wrote four lines of config instead.
Our own site had a tag manager container with leftover pixels for three days before a colleague noticed. We added it to the pre-launch checklist the same afternoon.
Test XML sitemaps from outside your network before you call it done. Your office Wi-Fi might cache the old answer for another six hours.
After fixing XML sitemaps, we added a monitoring alert. If the record changes or the certificate approaches expiry, both we and a hardware store get an email. No surprises.
The worst XML sitemaps failure we have seen at a hardware store was invisible for eight months. The backup existed but had never been tested, and the data inside was three migrations old.
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