Error with Rank Math Sitemap Functionality

Hello,

We apologize for the issue you are facing with the sitemap functionality on your website. The error message "Error: Sitemap not generated. Please check your settings or try again later" can be caused by several factors. Here are some steps you can take to diagnose and potentially resolve the issue:

1. Flush Permalinks: Sometimes, simply flushing your permalinks can resolve sitemap generation issues. To do this, go to your WordPress admin area, navigate to Settings → Permalinks, and click the “Save Changes” button without making any changes.
   

2. Check for Plugin Conflicts: Use the Health Check plugin to check for any conflicts with other plugins that might be affecting the sitemap functionality.

3. Review Sitemap Settings: Ensure that the sitemap module is enabled in Rank Math. You can check this by going to Rank Math SEO → Sitemap Settings.

4. Check for Content: If there is no content on your website, the sitemap may not generate. Make sure you have posts or pages published.

5. Server Configuration: If you are using Apache or Nginx, ensure that the necessary rewrite rules are correctly set up in your server configuration. For Apache, you may need to add specific rules to your .htaccess file, and for Nginx, you would need to update your Nginx config file accordingly.

   • For Apache:

     # START of Rank Math Sitemap Rewrite Rules
     RewriteEngine On
     RewriteBase /
     RewriteRule ^sitemap_index.xml$ /index.php?sitemap=1 [L]
     RewriteRule ^([^/]+?)-sitemap([0-9]+)?.xml$ /index.php?sitemap=$1&sitemap_n=$2 [L]
     RewriteRule ^([a-z]+)?-?sitemap.xsl$ /index.php?xsl=$1 [L]
     # END of Rank Math Sitemap Rewrite Rules

   • For Nginx:

     # START Nginx Rewrites for Rank Math Sitemaps
     rewrite ^/sitemap_index.xml$ /index.php?sitemap=1 last;
     rewrite ^/([^/]+?)-sitemap([0-9]+)?.xml$ /index.php?sitemap=$1&sitemap_n=$2 last;
     rewrite ^/([a-z]+)?-sitemap.xsl$ /index.php?xsl=$1 last;
     # END Nginx Rewrites for Rank Math Sitemaps

6. Caching Issues: If you have caching plugins installed, ensure that your sitemap is excluded from caching as it needs to be updated frequently. You can find more information on how to exclude sitemaps from caching in our tutorial.

If these steps do not resolve the issue, please reply to this ticket, and a human agent from the Rank Math Support team will take over and assist you further.

Thank you for raising this concern, and we hope to help you get your sitemap functioning correctly soon!

Sources:
Rank Math Sitemap Issues and Their Fixes » Rank Math
How to Fix "Incorrect HTTP Header Content-Type" Error in Sitemaps » Rank Math