[Plugin: XML Sitemap & Google News Sitemap Feeds] 404 Errors for Sitemaps with Good Robots.txt

That one broken link should be https://congoopenheart.org

Hi Chris, there appear to be several things going on there at the same time. But if you try any URL with /?feed=sitemap then you will see that the feeds are actually there (except on the main site, see issue 2)…

1. It looks like your LiteSpeed webserver is catching queries for .xml and throws a 404 error when there is no physical file available. I have no experience with LiteSpeed but can it not be configured to let WordPress handle the query just like it handles the /robots.txt queries? As far as I know, Apache does this by default…

2. Your main site seems to be redirecting ALL feeds (including the 2 sitemap feeds) to FeedBurner. Are you running FeedSmith there? Or else it might be a setting in your theme…

Hope these observations help you figure it out ??

Thanks for the quick response. I tried the /feed=sitemap on the main site but not the others. I’ll dig into Litespeed and see what I can find out. I’ll post my results back here if I come up with anything.

On #2, The main site is using the Genesis theme framework and I have my feedburner feed set in there. But it should just be for the main RSS feed, not others. For example there is a separate setting in the theme for redirecting the comment RSS feeds as well.

I’ll try sorting out the Litespeed issue first. That may resolve #2 but if it doesn’t I’ll check in here and over at the Genesis support forums to track it down.

Thanks for giving me a place to start! ??

I’ll be very interested in what you learn on both subjects.

LiteSpeed is likely the next platform my sites will be running so any preview into the matter will be very welcome.

And the feed redirection issue also affects anyone using the plugin Feedsmith for WordPress so you are not alone there…

I was missing a closing tag on an IfModule in my .htaccess file. Now that that is corrected everything works right when I switch my server to Apache.

However in LiteSpeed the /?feed=sitemap URL works correctly but the sitemap.xml is still giving me a 404 error. My guess is it is something with the LiteSpeed settings as it is supposed to handle redirects the same way Apache does.

I’ve submitted a support ticket to my web host to get it sorted. As an aside, this is on a dedicated server, not a shared hosting account. Now that I have a moment I’ll ask about the feed redirects in the Genesis support forums.

OK. Took me a couple days to getting around to asking the question in the StudioPress forums on the Genesis redirect issue with everything I have going on. Ended up with a fix to a core Genesis file to adjust the way it handles the feed redirect.

Any Genesis users who run into a problem with Genesis and this sitemap plugin can see how we fixed it here:
https://www.studiopress.com/support/showthread.php?p=267955

I’m still working with my hosting provider on the LiteSpeed issue. Trouble is LiteSpeed doesn’t have anywhere near as comprehensive logging as Apache does.

If we can’t resolve the problem I’ll be kicking LiteSpeed to the curb. Having good basic sitemaps for my users is more important and your plugin does the best job for Multisite from what I’ve seen after looking at some of the others.

Thanks Chris, for sharing that…

About LiteSpeed: it looks like I will be testing with a server in the coming month. If I run into the same issue and find a solution, I’ll share it here ??

Heya Ravan! I’ll do some more testing with LiteSpeed myself too. My project is one I expect will grow fairly large so I’d like to have the efficiency of LiteSpeed.

Hopefully between us we’ll figure out how to make LiteSpeed play nice with your plugin.

Thanks for your responsiveness and for your help! ??

Heya Ravan! We finally figured out my problem with LiteSpeed. I still had a ReWrite Rule in my .htaccess file that was left over from using the Google XML Sitemap plugin modded for Multisite.

When we removed this line from my .htaccess
RewriteRule ^(.*/)?sitemap.xml wp-content/sitemap.php [L]

The sitemaps started showing up no problem in LiteSpeed.

Basically the problem had nothing at all to do with your plugin. Of course I’m not sure why that didn’t cause problems for Apache too. But there you go.

Thanks again for writing such a light weight easy to use plugin!

Good to hear you got it working ??