Hello,
We apologize for the issue you are facing with the product category sitemap returning a 404 error. Since you have already confirmed that the sitemap is enabled and flushed the cache without resolution, we recommend trying to flush the permalinks as well. This can often resolve issues related to sitemap accessibility.
To flush permalinks, follow these steps:
- Go to your WordPress admin area.
- Navigate to Settings → Permalinks.
- Click the Save Changes button, even if you didn’t make any changes on the page.
After doing this, check if the product category sitemap is accessible again. If the issue persists, please ensure that there are no unintended rules in your robots.txt file that might be blocking access to the product category sitemap. You can check this by going to Rank Math SEO → General Settings → robots.txt.
If you continue to experience difficulties, please reply to this ticket, and a human agent from the Rank Math Support team will assist you further. Thank you for bringing this concern to our attention!
Sources:
Rank Math Sitemap Issues and Their Fixes » Rank Math
Hello,
Thank you for contacting us and sorry for any inconvenience that this issue might have caused.
Please follow the steps below for initial troubleshooting:
1. Flush the Sitemap cache by following this video screencast:
https://i.rankmath.com/pipRDp
2. Exclude the Sitemap files of the Rank Math plugin in your caching plugin. The cache could be via a plugin or from the server. For plugins or Cloudflare, please follow this article: https://rankmath.com/kb/exclude-sitemaps-from-caching/
If the issue persists then try disabling the transient cache for the sitemap. This will make sure that your XML sitemap always reflects the latest changes on your site. Kindly add this code snippet to your site:
/**
* Filter if XML sitemap transient cache is enabled.
*
* @param boolean $unsigned Enable cache or not, defaults to true
*/
add_filter( 'rank_math/sitemap/enable_caching', '__return_false');
If you’re not sure how to add this code, you can follow this guide: https://rankmath.com/kb/wordpress-hooks-actions-filters/.
After you add the code, please clear any cache on your site or server and check your XML sitemap again. If you’re still facing issues with the sitemap, please let us know – we are happy to investigate further.
Unfortunately, this has not fixed the issue to confirm I have done the following:
1. Flushed the sitemap cache.
2. Excluded the sitemaps from Litespeed Cache
3. Added the code snippet to the site’s functions.php file.
4. Flushed the sitemap cache and page cache.
Hello,
In this case, 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.
Hello,
I have updated the sensitive data as requested. Can you please check further?
Thank you.
I have provided you with a login to the staging site as uptime is imperative for this customer. If you can identify the issue, I can either make the change on the live site or provide you with access
Hello,
The issue comes from the filtering plugin you are using which overrides the WordPress query and our plugin cannot retrieve the pages from the product categories.
We recommend checking this with their support and see if it’s possible to reset the post data after running their query.
Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any other questions.
Hello,
Since we did not hear back from you for 15 days, we are assuming that you found the solution. We are closing this support ticket.
If you still need assistance or any other help, please feel free to open a new support ticket, and we will be more than happy to assist.
Thank you.
