For wordpress, I recommend grabbing the Simple Google Sitemap plugin to do this for you.

If you need help getting it installed, see setting up new plugins in wordpress.

Creating and Submitting Your XML Sitemap

Upload an empty sitemap.xml file to your wordpress root directory

To create an empty sitemap.xml, I recommend creating it on your server directly as follows:

Log into cpanel for your server

Open the “File Manager”

It is located in the “Files” section on the right side

Browse to /public_html/ on the left side

Select “New File”

It looks like a piece of paper with a green + on it and is at the far left of the top menu

A window should come up to create a new file

Enter sitemap.xml into the File Name box

Select “Create new file”

You should now see a sitemap.xml file in the /public_html/ folder

This should be /public_html/ if you set wordpress up as your site.

If you have an empty sitemap.xml file on your computer and want to upload it instead, you can do this with cpanel or ftp

Change the file permission to be writable

In cpanel, edit the permissions to 666 (RW-RW-RW-)

Log into cpanel

Select the File Manager

Go to your site root

Select "/public_html/ or Web Root on the left menu

Click the box next to your sitemap.xml file

Select "File Permissions" from the top menu

Change the file permissions to read+write for everyone

666 (numeric) or rw-rw-rw-

Save the attributes

Active Simple Google Sitemap in WordPress

Select "Plugins" from the admin menu

Find Simple Google Sitemap and select activate

Create Your Sitemap

Select "Settings" → "Simple Sitemap"

Select "Save Options"

Publish your Sitemap

Select "Create Sitemap"

If you get a notice that any of them failed, just click the link and it should work.

Thats it. Your site should now be indexed rather quickly by ask.com, google.com, msn.com, and yahoo.com.

Note: It appears that something has been changed and the Simple Google Sitemap plugin no longer works properly with yahoo.com. If yahoo gives you errors, don’t worry about it.