Subject: Taxonomy Sitemaps Returning 404 Errors

Hello,

We apologize for the issue you are facing with the taxonomy sitemaps returning 404 errors. It sounds like you’ve already taken several important troubleshooting steps, which is great.

Here are a few additional suggestions that might help resolve the issue:

1. Check Custom Taxonomy Settings: Ensure that your custom taxonomy is set to be publicly queryable and has the correct rewrite settings. You can verify this in your ACF settings where you registered the taxonomy.

2. Review Robots.txt: Make sure that your robots.txt file is not blocking access to the taxonomy sitemaps. You can check this by going to Rank Math SEO → General Settings → robots.txt.

3. Check for Rewrite Rules: Sometimes, custom taxonomies may not have the correct rewrite rules. You can try adding the following code to your theme’s functions.php file to flush rewrite rules:

   add_action('init', function() {
      flush_rewrite_rules();
   });

   After adding this, visit your site once to trigger the flush, then remove the code.

4. Debugging with Health Check Plugin: If you haven’t already, consider using the Health Check plugin to check for any plugin conflicts that might be affecting the sitemap functionality.

5. Check Server Configuration: If you are using Nginx, ensure that your server configuration allows for pretty permalinks and that there are no conflicting rules.

If these steps do not resolve the issue, please reply to this ticket with your site URL so we can investigate further. A human agent from our support team will take over and assist you more effectively.

Thank you for your patience, and we look forward to helping you resolve this issue!

Hello,

Thank you for your query and we are so sorry about the trouble this must have caused.

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/

We really look forward to helping you.