yes it is working
all i now do is rebuild my CI and tell google to crawl again.
This will guarantee my latest topics are crawled, indexing of course is another matter, but this should follow as my pages are optimised.
i do not claim to be an expert on php and xml and i am sure you guys and gals can improve on what i have done.
if any one is interested, just ask and i will publish all the code i have written/borrowed.
ps is there a mod here to make a CI longer than 15 links?.
added the next day: i am now submitting sitemaps containing all topics!