Just to clarify:

The sites  drop drop  out of the site  Directory Sites List, but out of the
dynamically displayed list  of sites when you click on the Site Map TAB when
navigated to the Site Directory.

(I say dynamic because the Site Map TAB displays only the sites you have access
to...)

So an update:

It appears that the site  Map is limited to being able to handle a total
of 50 items.


[The issue is that users cannot see new pages added to the site list, as
the Site Map page doesn't enumerate more than 50 objects from the
list...]



If I go in at the owner of the top-level-site, I can only see 50 items
on the Site Map page.

Interestingly, I can't edit the page to fix this...

Anyone else have a work around?

(We use the Site Map to give users a list  of sites  that they are
permitted to access... sort of an easy to navigate list of links to the
sites type use day to day. This is easier than searching the Site
Directory list.)

The SiteMap is pulling its information directly from a SiteMapProvider defined
in the Web.config. By default it limits the items returned to 50. You can
increase that by adding a parameter to the siteMapProvider entry being used by
the SiteMap page called DynamicChildLimit and increasing the value to whatever
limit you need. See the following BLOG for an example.

sharepointlive.blogspot.com/.../...an-50-items-in.\
html