Our robots.txt file is locked and cannot be edited

Hello,

We apologize for the issue you are facing with your robots.txt file being locked and unable to be edited. There are a few common reasons this might occur:

1. Presence of a Physical File: If there is a physical robots.txt file in the root folder of your website, it can prevent Rank Math from editing it. You can check this by accessing your site via FTP or cPanel File Manager and removing the physical file if it exists.

2. Other Plugin Interference: Sometimes, another plugin may be creating the robots.txt file, which would prevent Rank Math from making changes. You can try disabling other SEO-related plugins to see if that resolves the issue.

3. Permission Issues: There may be permission issues on your web server that are preventing edits. In this case, contacting your web host for assistance would be advisable.

4. File Editing Disabled: Ensure that the DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT constant in your wp-config.php file is set to false. If it is set to true, you will need to change it. Here’s how you can do that:

   define ('DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT', false);

5. Plugin Settings: If you have security plugins like Really Simple SSL, they might disable built-in editors for security reasons. You can check the settings in such plugins to ensure they allow editing.

If you continue to experience difficulties after checking these points, please reply to this ticket, and a human agent from our support team will assist you further. Thank you for bringing this concern to our attention!

Sources:
I Can’t Edit My Website’s Robots.txt » Rank Math
Common robots.txt Issues & How to Fix Them » Rank Math