You need to be running Strapi v4.11.4 or higher to run v3.
The following manual steps will have to be done when migrating.
The path for accessing the sitemap has changed.
Starting from v3, the sitemap can be accessed with the following new path:
GET /api/sitemap/index.xml
This new path has to be updated in your robots.txt and in Google Search Console.
The public sitemap folder has become redundant.
The following folder can be removed from your Strapi instance:
/public/sitemap
You have to do a one-time manual sitemap re-generation.
The following thing have been introduced or updated.
As of v3, the plugin will store the sitemap.xml in the database, instead of storing it in the public folder.
To access the sitemap you will have to query it through Strapi's public REST API.
The plugin provides the following endpoint to do so:
GET /api/sitemap/index.xml
The new default for sitemap re-generation will be through CRON.
As of v3, a cron job will be registered automatically that will regenerate your sitemap once a day at 00:00.
The cron can be altered or disabled through plugin config.
Because of that, the auto generation option will be disabled by default. You can still enable auto generation through plugin config.
The sitemap configuration page in Strapi admin has been moved to the Settings section of your Strapi app.
From now on it can be accessed on the following path:
/admin/settings/sitemap
Large sitemaps (larger then 45.000 urls) will automatically be split up in to seperate sitemaps.
Then a sitemap index will be created that links to all the different sitemap chunks.
The sitemap index will be accessible on /api/sitemap/index.xml.
You can alter the 45.000 magic number through plugin config.