Sitemap and Canonical Release Checklist

A growing wiki needs search hygiene. Each article should publish as one clear URL with matching metadata, internal discovery, and sitemap coverage.

Required page signals

• A unique, stable slug.
• A useful title and meta description.
• A canonical URL that points to the article route, not the site root.
• Sitemap inclusion after publication.
• Internal links from the wiki index, category, or related-page blocks.

Release checklist

• Validate JSON and duplicate slugs.
• Fetch /wiki/<slug> locally and confirm HTTP 200.
• Inspect the canonical link in rendered HTML.
• Search the sitemap for the new URL after deploy.
• Run representative search queries that should surface the page.

Pitfalls

• Dynamic article pages can accidentally inherit a root canonical if the renderer does not pass the article path.
• A sitemap entry is not useful if the route 404s in production.
• Noindex is correct for private previews but wrong for intentionally public wiki guides.

Verification steps

• Check at least two new article URLs live after deployment.
• Fetch the live sitemap and confirm the new URLs are present.
• Use a mobile screenshot to verify the page is readable, not just indexable.