Hello,
Thank you for contacting us and sorry for any inconvenience that might have been caused due to that.
Please note that the sitemap generates on the fly in Rank Math, when you enable that module. We rely on redirects enabled by your server software to accomplish that. As the Sitemap doesn’t work in your case, you may have to add some rewrite rules to them in order to function sitemaps properly.
It seems that the XML sitemap is working, but the linked XSL file is not – /main-sitemap.xsl redirecting to homepage. We can only access that with the direct URI that looks like this: /?xsl=main.
So the issues are basically that /?xsl=main should be rewritten to /main-sitemap.xsl (the rewrite pattern looks like this: /([a-z]+)?-?sitemap\.xsl$/' => '?xsl=$1).
This issue is related to your server configuration. So, I suggest you to get in touch with your hosting provider for this issue.
Regarding the HTML sitemap, can you please share some more details about the issue you’re facing with the shortcode? You can share a screenshot by using this tool: https://imgur.com/upload so that we can check the issue further for you.
Let us know how it goes. Looking forward to helping you.
Thank you.
Thank you for the response. I contacted my hosting company yesterday. The person I talked to said:
“I would like to set your expectation that this is scripting issue, and not part of our scope of support, but I will gladly check this for you and give an update.”
He apparently tried to help and did something and told me to wait an hour or two to check. It’s been 12 hours though, and the XML sitemap still looks the same, so I guess more needs to be done (but I’m also not sure what he did on his end).
—
Regarding the HTML sitemap, it too was blank before, but I checked just now at (https://yinzbuy.com/sitemap/), and as you can see it’s really odd.
First, as you can see, there are no posts listed – only categories.
Second, there are categories that aren’t actually public categories listed (Not in the main menu bar for the site). I was at one point thinking of consolidating categories into a fewer amount. Maybe I need to delete those ones?
Third, the categories duplicate a number of times. Things start out ok despite putting child categories in line with parent ones. But then after it goes through that, it starts listing them again in alphabetical order and then sprinkles other groups in the mix of that? I saw “Shark Tank” listed 3 times for example.
Again thank you for your time and assistance!
Hello,
Can you please try to follow the steps below and see if that works for you?
1. Flush the Sitemap cache by following this video screencast:
https://i.rankmath.com/pipRDp
2. Exclude the Sitemap files of the Rank Math plugin in your caching plugin. The cache could be via a plugin or from the server. For plugins or Cloudflare, please follow this article:
https://rankmath.com/kb/exclude-sitemaps-from-caching/
3. If the above steps don’t seem to work, kindly apply the following filter to your site.
add_filter( 'rank_math/sitemap/enable_caching', '__return_false');
Here’s how you can add filter/hook to your WordPress site:
https://rankmath.com/kb/wordpress-hooks-actions-filters/
However, to remove any category from the HTML sitemap, you can exclude the id of this category from WordPress Dashboard > Rank Math > Sitemap Settings > General > Exclude Terms: https://rankmath.com/kb/configure-sitemaps/#exclude-terms
Please note that this will exclude the category from both the XML sitemap and the HTML sitemap.
If the issue still persists, then we might need to take a closer look at the settings. Please edit the first post on this ticket and include your WordPress & FTP logins in the designated Sensitive Data section.
Please do take a complete backup of your website before sharing the information with us.
It is completely secure and only our support staff has access to that section. If you want, you can use the below plugin to generate a temporary login URL to your website and share that with us instead:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/temporary-login-without-password/
You can use the above plugin in conjunction with the WP Security Audit Log to monitor what changes our staff might make on your website (if any):
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-security-audit-log/
Looking forward to helping you.
Thank you.
So I believe things may be fixed for the most part, but I wanted you to check and make sure you’re seeing the same things I am.
It appears that we have a visible XML sitemap now (https://yinzbuy.com/sitemap_index.xml)
Also, I excluded the categories as you directed, and it appears that we now have posts on the HTML sitemap (https://yinzbuy.com/sitemap/).
If you scroll all the way down the HTML sitemap, you’ll see that it’s still doing weird stuff with the categories for some reason. For instance, it lists “Appliances” 3 times, and it’s all for the exact same category/URL:
https://yinzbuy.com/category/all-products/home-kitchen/appliances/
https://yinzbuy.com/category/all-products/home-kitchen/appliances/
https://yinzbuy.com/category/all-products/home-kitchen/appliances/
I assume it’s listing all categories 3 times as the few I spot checked were. I guess that’s the only thing I’m having an issue with now.
Hello,
Regarding the duplicate categories issue, we have seen this bug in the HTML sitemap feature, but our developers are already aware and fixing it to remove the duplicate entries from the categories.
Moreover, the fix should be available in the upcoming updates. We’ll update our users through our usual communication channel if the fix is already included. You can also keep an eye on our changelog here: https://rankmath.com/changelog
We would really appreciate your kind patience regarding this matter.
Thank you.
OK great. If that duplicated category issue is something the team is looking into, then it appears all other issues are currently resolved or working. I’ll go ahead and click that checkbox that things are resolved.
Thanks for all your time.
Hello,
We are super happy that this resolved your issue. If you have any other questions in the future, know that we are here to help you.
If you don’t mind me asking, could you please leave us a review (if you haven’t already) on https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/seo-by-rank-math/reviews/#new-post about your overall experience with Rank Math? We appreciate your time and patience.
If you do have another question in the future, please feel free to create a new forum topic, and it will be our pleasure to assist you again.
Thank you.
