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Hello,
I went to look at my sitemaps today to re-submit them to Google Search Console. When I click the link Rank Math / Sitemap Settings / General / https://www.schoolsitepress.com.au/sitemap_index.xml
It’s the same for all of my sitemaps including pages, posts etc.
I get the following error message on the new tab:
This page contains the following errors:
error on line 2 at column 6: XML declaration allowed only at the start of the document
Below is a rendering of the page up to the first error.Version 1.0.70
Kind regards,
Neil
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Hello,
Thank you for contacting the support, and sorry for any inconvenience that might have been caused due to that.
I checked your sitemap and I am seeing the same error as well. That is usually due to extra whitespace at the end or beginning of the functions.php file on your theme or to some plugins.
To troubleshoot this, you can try switching your theme to the default one and see if the issue goes away. You can also do the same with your plugins. You may follow this simple guide: https://rankmath.com/kb/check-plugin-conflicts/
Only the site admin would know and your users won’t be affected by this troubleshooting.
If the issue persists on your end, 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.
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.
The ticket ‘Sitemap errors’ is closed to new replies.