Problems with sitemap index

Hello,

We apologize for the issue you are facing with the sitemap index. Since you’ve already tried clearing the cache and changing the permalinks, here are a few additional steps you can take to troubleshoot the problem:

1. Check for a Blank Space Error: Ensure there are no blank spaces or lines before the XML declaration in your sitemap file. This can often cause errors. You can check this by viewing the source code of your sitemap.
   

2. Flush Permalinks Again: Sometimes, simply saving the permalinks again can resolve issues. Go to Settings → Permalinks in your WordPress dashboard and click Save Changes without making any changes.
   

3. Check for Custom Rewrite Rules: If you are using an Apache or Nginx server, ensure that the appropriate rewrite rules are added to your .htaccess or Nginx configuration file respectively. Here’s an example 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

4. Check for Plugin Conflicts: Even if you believe there are no conflicts, it might be worth running a conflict check using the Health Check plugin to ensure everything is functioning correctly.

5. Review Server Logs: If possible, check your server error logs for any specific errors related to the sitemap generation.

If these steps do not resolve the issue, please reply to this ticket with your site URL so that a human agent from our support team can assist you further. Thank you for raising this concern!