Exclude Folder or File from the Sitemap for Jekyll(Hydejack) Blog

in Blog on Github Pages, Jekyll

Webmaster tools (such as Google Search Console) use sitemap.xml file to get help crawling. The file work as content for the blog. Jekyll (and Hydejack) use jekyll-sitemap plugin to automatically generate sitemap.xml file. You can check mine from here.

However, one may want to exclude a specific file or folder from the sitemap to prevent being crawled by search engines. For example, Hydejack excludes the assets & licenses folder from the sitemap.
At least it tries. It fails to do so because of the invalid value.

In my case, I wanted to remove the google-search-verification file & Naver search verification file from the sitemap.

So today, I’ll show you how to do so.

TL;DR

If you are using the Hydejack theme for the Jekyll blog, simply add the below setting to your _config.yml file.

# file: "_config.yml"
# Don't include all the files from `folder_to_exclude` in the sitemap
- scope:
    path:            folder_to_exclude/**
  values:
    sitemap:         false

# Don't include `file_name_to_exclude.file_extension` in the sitemap
- scope:
    path:            file_name_to_exclude.file_extension
  values:
    sitemap:         false

Long Story

Luckily for us, Hydejack already comes with proper setup. So all we need to do is add a valid setting to disable sitemap from _config.yml file.

Exclude All contents of the Folder

If you wish to exclude all the contents of a folder from the sitemap (Such as assets or licenses). You need to add below to _config.yml. Notice ** suffixed to the folder name.
Default Hydejack starter-kit lacks this suffix, thus fails to exclude the folder.1
(See related issue I created for detail)

# file: "_config.yml"
# Don't include documents in assets in the sitemap
- scope:
    path:            assets/**
  values:
    sitemap:         false

# Don't include licenses in sitemap (feel free to delete)
- scope:
    path:            licenses/**
  values:
    layout:          plain
    sitemap:         false

# Don't include all the files from `folder_to_exclude` in the sitemap
- scope:
    path:            folder_to_exclude/**
  values:
    sitemap:         false

Exclude Specific File

I wanted to remove verification file for Google Search Console & Naver. This is how you do it.

# file: "_config.yml"
# Don't include site verification file(for google) in the sitemap
- scope:
    path:            google93abcae935f31b7d.html
  values:
    sitemap:         false

# Don't include site verification file(for Naver) in the sitemap
- scope:
    path:            navera03014a241218f942080c56d67e79469.html
  values:
    sitemap:         false

# Don't include `file_name_to_exclude.file_extension` in the sitemap
- scope:
    path:            file_name_to_exclude.file_extension
  values:
    sitemap:         false

  1. Notice licenses still exist in the sitemap ↩︎