The ASP.net MVC sitemap provider is a solution aiming to provide your website with a fully functioning set of sitemap tools, such as breadcrumbs and node navigation.
If you do not have any previous experience in using sitemaps on an ASP.net website, I would strongly recommend reading this MSDN article on ASP.net sitemaps. Many of the principles used in the ASP.net MVC framework are the same and reading this article will give you some fundamental basic principles.
Once you get the ASP.net MVC sitemap provider downloaded and registered, you should see that a sitemap file (Mvc.sitemap) has been created in your MVC solution’s root:
Next, you need to go about editing your MVC.sitemap file so that it actually reflects the pages on your web site that are available to the user. This is the important bit – if you don’t get this right, the sitemap provider will not work as expected. All nodes in your file must:
Be wrapped in an overall parent node representing the home page of your website.
After all, the homepage is always the first point of call into any web application
Point to REAL controllers and REAL actions.
If you fill up your MVC.sitemap file with dummy nodes pointing to non existent controllers and actions, asp.net MVC site provider will not return these nodes in any rendering of the sitemap. You will not get an error message, but will just not see your nodes.
Not point to a controller and an action that is already pointed to by a previous node.
Again, the asp.net MVC sitemap provider will just remove any duplicate instances at runtime. You will not get an error message, but will just not see your nodes.
