I’ve seen a few common questions about the Site Navigation feature from folks at conferences and in blogs that I thought would be worth quickly answering:

>>> Question: With the default XML File Provider can you use a filename other than web.sitemap to store your site map information?

Answer: Yes.  The filename used with the XML File Provider can be specified in your web.config file (the default name we configure is web.sitemap).  This MSDN article shows how to-do this (among other things).

>>> Question: With the default XML File Provider can you partition your site map definition across multiple files (for example: have a site map file stored in a sub-directory of the site that defines the sitemap makeup of just that sub-directory)?

Answer: Yes – that is pretty easy to-do.  This MSDN article shows how to-do this.

>>> Question: Is it possible to filter what nodes are visible in the site-map based on the security role permissions of the current user visiting the site (for example: hide those nodes that they don’t have access to)?

Answer: Yes. This MSDN article show how to-do this.

>>> Question: Is it possible to dynamically add nodes into a site-map (for example: for forum or blog post listings underneath a leaf node) without having to write a custom SiteMapProvider?

Answer: Yes.  This MSDN Article and this blog post discuss how to-do this.

>>> Question: Can you localize site-maps (for example: have German and English content).

Answer: Yes.  This MSDN article shows how to-do this.

>>> Question: Can you define a site map definition in something other than an XML file (for example: instead use a database?).

Answer: Yes.  The Site Navigation system is provider based, which means that you can use any custom provider implementation to define the site-map hierarchy.  What is even cooler, is that you can optionally use multiple providers together – for example: use the XML provider for the overall structure, but maybe a blog specific provider that goes against a blog database to populate the nodes dynamically underneath a portion of the site.

Jeff Prosise also has a cool sample that he talks about here on how to build a SiteMapProvider that retrieves the sitemap structure from a database rather than the default XML file provider.  This MSDN article also links to a bunch of content on building your own SiteMap provider.

The next version of SharePoint (which is heavily integrated on top of ASP.NET 2.0) will also include a SharePoint specific Site Navigation provider that dynamically populates the site-map with the content contained within a SharePoint site.

Hope this helps,

Scott