Hello,
We apologize for the issue you are facing with editing your robots.txt file. Since you’ve already removed the physical robots.txt file from your root directory but are still encountering the message that it is locked, there are a few things you can check:
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Clear Cache: Sometimes, caching plugins or server-side caching can cause this issue. Try clearing your website’s cache and see if that resolves the problem.
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Check for Other Plugins: Ensure that no other plugins are creating a robots.txt file. If another SEO plugin or a security plugin is managing the robots.txt file, it may prevent Rank Math from editing it.
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Permissions Issue: There might be permission issues on your web server that are preventing Rank Math from accessing the file. You may need to contact your web host for assistance with this.
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Advanced Mode: Make sure you are in Advanced Mode in Rank Math. You can enable it by navigating to WordPress Dashboard → Rank Math SEO and switching to Advanced Mode if you haven’t done so already.
If you’ve checked all of these and are still having trouble, please reply to this ticket, and a human agent from the Rank Math Support team will assist you further.
Thank you for raising this concern!
Sources:
I Can’t Edit My Website’s Robots.txt » Rank Math
Common robots.txt Issues & How to Fix Them » Rank Math
Hello,
Thank you for contacting us and sorry for any inconvenience that might have been caused due to that.
If you’ve already removed the physical robots.txt file from the root directory, please clear Rank Math’s transients from WP Dashboard > Rank Math > Status & Tools > Database Tools > Remove Rank Math Transients: https://rankmath.com/kb/rank-math-status-and-tools/#rank-math-transients
Once done, please clear your website cache including any server-level cache, and check again.
Let us know how it goes. Looking forward to helping you.
Thank you.
Hello Rakibuzzaman,
I cleared Rank Math’s transients and then cleared our website cache via the LiteSpeed Cache plugin. We’re using a cPanel server, which does not require any additional server-level cache clearing for this setup. I’ve also cleared my browser cache and logged into WordPress via Chromium and Safari.
Unfortunately, the robots.txt editor in Rank Math is still locked down.
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.
Hello,
Unfortunately, the FTP login you’ve shared is not working. Please check the screenshot in the sensitive data section for reference.
Please update the logins in the sensitive data section so that we can check the issue further for you.
Looking forward to helping you.
Thank you.
Hello,
I have updated the sensitive data as requested. Can you please check further?
Thank you.
Hello,
We found and deleted the static robots.txt in your site directory.
You can now edit the robots.txt using Rank math.
(see image in the sensitive data section).
Hope that helps, and please do not hesitate to let us know if you need our assistance with anything else.
Thank you kindly!
Could you please tell me the file path where this robots.txt was located?
The only one I found was at /home/newbedcpanel/public_html and I deleted that one.
Hello,
Unfortunately, we didn’t take note of the particular path or directory where the static robots.txt was located.
We simply ran a search for the robots.txt on the entire site files, and once we found it, we deleted it.
Don’t hesitate to reach out if you have further concerns or questions.
Thanks.
