Hey guys! Below you’ll find my sitemap.
My Sitemap Best Practice Recommendations
In the screenshots and the underlying sitemap source code you will recognize the following concepts:
- Clean Main Page: Only the most important and summarized elements are shown, e.g. Speedtest, Kodi, Heating
- Summary Elements Almost all front page text elements are rule-based summaries of a more complex Item structure. The summary element often contains a nested subframe with all the (relevant) details and controls. See for example the Sonos Summary Item
- Conditional Presentation: Elements are only shown if relevant, e.g. Sunset/Sunrise, Kodi Controls
- Error Indicators: If a device, Binding or any other aspect behind an Item is not working correctly, the corresponding sitemap element is replaced by an error element. A sitemap element should never wrongfully offer information or an action which are not available. See here for an example.
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No Groups: Groups are NOT used in the main part as the way how their presentation can be influenced is very limited. Pay attention to two exceptions: The Admin area described below and the Element
Text item=gLights, here the number of active lights based on the group is shown. - Admin Area: In this area at the bottom of my example I’ll find ALL my items automatically sorted by groups. This is a huge part of my sitemap but only a few lines in the sitemap file. This part should be available in every installation for debugging, tests and experiments. I’ve seen users with a dedicated sitemap for this and that might be beneficial if others have access to the sitemap and shouldn’t mess around with raw Items.
