Hello,
Thanks for contacting us and sorry for any inconvenience that might have been caused due to that.
Can you please follow these steps?
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/
That should fix the issue. Please let me know if that does not. We are here to assist.
Okay! I’ll try and let you know of the result. I just did it, and it did not immediately solve the problem. Do I have to wait? How long?
Hello,
We might need to take a closer look at the settings. Please edit the first post on this ticket and include your WordPress 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,
Thank you for your patience.
Could you please also check your website’s root directory if you have a static file sitemap_index.xml? If so, please delete that file as Rank Math’s sitemap is generated virtually.
If there’s no file, it would seem like a conflict with one of the plugins or the theme you are using.
To determine that, please follow this troubleshooting guide:
https://rankmath.com/kb/check-plugin-conflicts/
Here is a video you can follow as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcIWRhcUP2c
Only the site admin would know and your users won’t be affected by this troubleshooting.
We really look forward to helping you.
Hello,
I’m sorry, this is a bit confusing. I’m not sure where I should find the sitemap file in the root directory. I only want to use the Rank Math sitemap.
Could you be able to do it for me? That would be very much appreciated.
I’m guessing it has something to do with the cPanel since you said something about the directory..?
So I’ll leave the cPanel login info in the sensitive data section. Thank you.
I’m sorry but can I get an answer to this?
Hello,
I have investigated this issue and found that there was a special character in the blog name that was preventing the stylesheet of the sitemap from loading.
The initial character was not encoded properly and was causing the issue.
Have a look at the below screenshot –
I removed that character from your WordPress Dashboard > Settings and this has fixed the issue.
The sitemap is now loading perfectly fine.
Check out the below screenshot –
Hope this helps.
Thank you.
Thanks so much!! However, it’s not loading up on my side at the moment. Do you know why? Same issue as last time.. Thanks so much for helping
example: sitename.com/sitemap_index.xml
Hello,
The sitemap is loading properly. Please clear your website and browser’s cache and access the sitemaps again.
You can also try opening the sitemap in an incognito/private window of your web browser and see if that helps.
Let us know how that goes.
Thank you.
Really really helpful. I got it all fixed thanks to you guys.
Have a nice day!
Hello,
Glad that helped.
Please feel free to reach out to us again in case you need any other assistance.
We are here to help.
Thank you.
