Sitemaps & URL discovery

Your sitemap is the single source of truth for what gets warmed. Add one URL, and the warming list keeps itself up to date.

Adding a sitemap

In your project settings, paste the URL of your sitemap — for most sites that's https://example.com/sitemap.xml. Both plain sitemaps and sitemap indexes work: if the URL points to an index, we fetch every child sitemap recursively and collect all page URLs.

<!-- Both of these work: -->
https://example.com/sitemap.xml
https://example.com/sitemap-index.xml

Automatic re-discovery

Before every scheduled run, the sitemap is fetched again. That means:

• New pages you publish are picked up automatically — no manual step.
• Removed pages disappear from the warming list, so we never keep hammering deleted URLs.
• Discovery requests identify themselves with the WarmupRocks user agent plus a sitemap discovery marker.

Extra URLs

Some URLs belong in the cache but not in a sitemap — critical CSS/JS bundles, API endpoints that return cacheable JSON, or a search page. Add them as extra URLs in the project settings; they're warmed alongside the sitemap URLs but never touch your public sitemap.

URL limits per plan

If your sitemap contains more URLs than your plan allows, we warm the first N in sitemap order. Sitemaps usually list important pages first, so priority follows your own ordering.

Troubleshooting

• HTTP 404 on discovery — double-check the sitemap URL in a browser. A common mix-up: the file is sitemap.xml, not sitemap-index.xml (or vice versa).
• Empty URL list — some sitemap plugins render the XML with JavaScript or behind a redirect chain. The sitemap must be plain XML at a stable URL.
• Blocked by WAF — allow the WarmupRocks user agent or configure a secret header. See Analytics & WAF filtering.