[Feature request]i18n support

[Glennvd]

Jekyll supports multilingual websites through a plugin (https://github.com/screeninteraction/jekyll-multiple-languages-plugin). It would be great to be able to include these in the sitemap as well.

[parkr]

Can you explain how you would like to include them in the sitemap? Perhaps the plugin could add them?

[pathawks]

I think the deal is that screeninteraction/jekyll-multiple-languages-plugin creates several different versions of the site: one for each language provided (generated in _site/en/ for example), plus the default language in the root position (generated _site/).

Because each language is built as a separate site, the sitemap.xml that is built in the root cannot know about each page built for each language specific version of the site.

I have no idea how this could be addressed for this specific plugin.

[pathawks]

With the current design of screeninteraction/jekyll-multiple-languages-plugin, there is just no way this is possible 😞

[KMax]

There're guidelines from Google about alternative language pages. I guess, the plugin could apply them to include links to alternative pages in the root sitemap.xml.

[Ryuno-Ki]

@pathawks Could you go more in detail about this?

With the current design of screeninteraction/jekyll-multiple-languages-plugin, there is just no way this is possible 😞

What is the main issue here? I would like to look into writing a PR to address this (because I am currently working on WeAreFairphone/landing-page which would benefit from this feature. I am wondering, on which site I would have to write a patch.

[pathawks]

@Ryuno-Ki Just to elaborate a bit:

The way screeninteraction/jekyll-multiple-languages-plugin works is by generating the site multiple times, once for each language. This means that when (ie) the German version of a site is generating, Jekyll does not know anything about the English version of a site. When the English version of a site is generating, Jekyll does not know anything about the German version of the site. The way the plugin is implemented, there is no way for a plugin to even know that other language versions of the site exist!

In order for this sitemap plugin to work with that plugin, there would need to be only one generate performed on a site. That would require a complete redesign of how screeninteraction/jekyll-multiple-languages-plugin works; not just a few changes, but redesigning the foundational design. It impossible for jekyll-sitemap to work with the current design of screeninteraction/jekyll-multiple-languages-plugin.

I think, rather than trying to completely redesign that plugin, it would be easier to add a sitemap generator to screeninteraction/jekyll-multiple-languages-plugin.

[elnappo]

As a workaround I use sitemapindex as jekyll-sitemap generates a sitemap.xml for every language e.g. /sitemap.xml and /en/sitemap.xml

sitemap_index.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<sitemapindex
    xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
    <sitemap>
        <loc>https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml</loc>
    </sitemap>
    <sitemap>
        <loc>https://www.example.com/en/sitemap.xml</loc>
    </sitemap>
</sitemapindex>

robots.txt:

User-agent: *
Sitemap: https://www.example.com/sitemap_index.xml

[pathawks]

@elnappo This is an interesting idea I hadn’t considered! Thanks for sharing