Why is sitemap-0.xml generated for small sites?

Describe the bug When I first installed this package, it generated sitemap.xml. Earlier this year, my site started generating a sitemap-0.xml file. It’s a small site of <20 URLs so no need for multiple sitemaps.

Is this a bug I introduced or a feature of this package? I read https://github.com/iamvishnusankar/next-sitemap/issues/318 but it didn’t help much because I really just want sitemap.xml only.

My package.json:

{
  "build": "next build",
  "postbuild": "next-sitemap"
  "devDependencies": {
      ....
      "next-sitemap": "^2.5.14", 
  }
}

My next-sitemap.js

module.exports = {
  siteUrl: "example.com",
  generateRobotsTxt: true,
  changefreq: "daily",
  priority: 0.7,
  exclude: [ ...  ],
};

To Reproduce npm run build

Expected behavior Since I have a small site, I expect to have only sitemap.xml file. No need for split sitemap files.

[JuroUhlar]

I second this. I have a small site and expected a simple sitemap.xml.

Generating a sitemap index that links to the actual sitemap is just… weird. It forced me spend time re-reading the docs to make sure something is not wrong with my config. I concluded it’s probably fine and submitted my code. But then other team members though it was weird too, so I had to spend more time on Google, learning how sitemap indexes work and making sure that having an index instead of a single sitemap is not somehow worse for SEO.

It also breaks some sitemap validation tools that are like “Paste the URL of your site here… Sitemap is valid!”. But it only validates the sitemap index, not the actual sitemap. Like, I understand that going for an index every time probably streamlines the code, but it goes against user expectation. It would be more intuitive if the output was just a single sitemap.xml for small sites (maybe make the limit configurable). Thanks for your consideration! 😃

[iamvishnusankar]

@benjaminhoffman, @JuroUhlar, @CloutProject, @dkodeit, @FitFingers, @isaachinman

Refactored the entire project and added support for disabling index-sitemap generation along with ESM support.