Simple Google Sitemap XML for WordPress

I installed the Google Sitemap XML plugin on WordPress, but I cannot figure out where to find the URL of my sitemap to copy and paste to Google. Your website says to go to the « plugin’s admin page » but I don’t know what this means / can’t find it. Thanks and sorry for the dumb question!

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Hi Susan and Beth! Sorry if the instructions weren’t clear enough!

Once you’ve activated the plugin, you’ll see a link in the admin page’s sidebar called « Google Sitemap XML ». Click on the link and it will bring you to the admin’s setup page.

You’ll see, in white, the URL that you need to copy/paste in your Google Webmaster Tools page.

Hope that helps a bit! I’ll try to post screenshots in the next days so people don’t get too confused.

Alex

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Hi Houston,

I’m glad you downloaded our plugin!

Yes, the XML file contains the default permaling structure, i.e p=372 for example, because the plugin doesn’t « know » what is everyone’s permalink structure.

This does not affect, however, how your site will get crawled because Google will go to http://www.mysite.com/?p=72 but since you have a 301 redirect rule, there is a redirection to http://www.mysite.com/about-us. This redirection is « Google-safe », which means Google will memorize http://www.mysite.com/about-us as the URL and not the default p=72 one.

I will soon improve the plugin to include the permalink structure so people don’t think their URL’s will get saved properly by Google!

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Hi Melissa,

Thanks for downloading our Simple Google Sitemap XML plugin !

Do you see a « Google Sitemap XML » link under « Settings » ? If yes, click on it, and you should see your XML URL. For your website, it should be:
http://city-analysis.net/test1/wp-content/plugins/simple-google-sitemap-xml/sitemap.xml

but it doesn’t work. So are you sure you installed the plugin and activated it ?

Alex

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After I installed the plug-in, I got this error:
Warning: fopen(/home/themis/public_html/inxiaoyuan.com/wp-content/plugins/simple-google-sitemap-xml/sitemap.xml) [function.fopen]: failed to open stream: Permission denied in /home/themis/public_html/inxiaoyuan.com/wp-content/plugins/simple-google-sitemap-xml/simple-google-sitemap-xml.php on line 31

sitemap.xml is not created. Please help. Thanks Alan

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Thank you for your quick reply. it is working now…

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Hi Kristen,

Thanks for your comment!

Upgrade/download the latest version and you shouldn’t get any 404 errors anymore.

Tell me if that worked!

Alex

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Hi, thanks for the plugin, a friend told me to use it.

I am having a problem, I get this error msg:

Fatal error: Cannot redeclare generate_xmlsitemap() (previously declared in /home/xxx/public_html/wp-content/plugins/simple-google-sitemap-xml/simple-google-sitemap-xml.php:29) in /home/xxx/public_html/wp-content/plugins/simple-google-sitemap-xml/simple-google-sitemap-xml.php on line 40

The plugin folder simple-google-sitemaps-xml is set to permissions 755.
I got a feeling its having problems actually creating the xml file.

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Hi Taron,

Thanks for your question!

It seems that there are two instances of the plugin installed…Did you install the plugin twice?

Alex

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Hi Taron,

You should uninstall both in the Plugins->Installed section of your admin. Look for « Simple Google Sitemap XML » and click on the « uninstall » link.

Then, re-install it via the WP Plugin section.

Tell me if that worked!

Alex

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Hi Taron,

It’s my pleasure to help you!

OK so the last error message means you don’t have the right permissions set to your folder.

Can you make sure the permissions of the directory wp-content/plugins/simple-google-sitemap-xml/ are set to 755 ?

Alex

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Hi Taron,

Can you set the PHP file’s permission to 755 ?

Tell me if that worked!

Alex

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Hey Taron, don’t give up!
You usually can set a file’s permission in our server admin panel, in directory/file access or something. Or perhaps you could simply ask your host to set the permissions of this specific file to 755!

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Hi,

It works when I set it to 777 or 757. Is that safe?

Regards,

Taroon.

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Great! Thanks Alex.

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Plugin could not be activated because it triggered a fatal error.

Fatal error: Cannot redeclare generate_xmlsitemap() (previously declared in /var/www/vhosts/usjanitorialservices.com/httpdocs/wp-content/plugins/simple-google-sitemap-xml/simple-google-sitemap-xml.php:29) in /var/www/vhosts/usjanitorialservices.com/httpdocs/wp-content/plugins/simple-google-sitemap-xml/simple-google-sitemap-xml.php on line 40

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I have the sitemap plugin installed and the permissions set correctly. How do I see the site map on the site?

Am I missing something – create a page and add something?

Merci

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i have installed & activated this plugin on submiting url to google it showing
———————–
URL not allowed
This url is not allowed for a Sitemap at this location.
URL:
http://sandesh.makemycreative.in/
Problem detected on: Nov 16, 2010
12
URL not allowed
This url is not allowed for a Sitemap at this location.
URL:
http://sandesh.makemycreative.in/?p=593
Problem detected on: Nov 16, 2010
19
URL not allowed
This url is not allowed for a Sitemap at this location.
URL:
http://sandesh.makemycreative.in/?p=572
Problem detected on: Nov 16, 2010
26
URL not allowed
This url is not allowed for a Sitemap at this location.
URL:
http://sandesh.makemycreative.in/?p=570
Problem detected on: Nov 16, 2010

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@Sheila: You simply need to go your admin WordPress panel, and check under « Settings » in your sidebar, there should be a link there called « Google Sitemap XML ». Click on that link and you should see your URL on the plugin’s settings page.

@yash: Unfortunately, we cannot change the sitemap’s URL.

@Katie: No, this is not a plugin that generates a « human readable » sitemap, but rather generates an XML file that is useful for search engines such as Google.

Thanks for downloading our plugin !

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Hi, thank you for this plugin, I just installed it and created easily a site map for Google. Bye.

Luca

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Hi,

Yes you can install it manually, but you must make sure the plugin’s folder permissions allow writing (wp-content/plugins/simple-google/sitemap-xml/), because that’s where the XML file will be created.

Some people have reported « file permissions » problems, but it’s due to their host server configuration.

Alex

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Hello Everybody,

I wanted to add a few notes here for others who might run across the same problem I did while using this plugin.

A sitemap file is supposed to be in the root directory, that the contents of the sitemap file describe.
This plugin creates a sitemap for the entire website, but is placed in a directory down many levels from the site root directory. In my case the site root is ‘public_html’, but the sitemap file is in ‘public_html/wp-content/plugins/simple-google/sitemap-xml/’. By the rules for sitemaps, the file should only be able to describe content under the sitemap-xml directory.

When submitting the URL provided by the plug-in to Google Webmaster Tools, I get errors in the sitemap parsing that the entries in the sitemap cannot be described from that location. This is do to the content described vs. file location issue I described above.

There are two solutions for this to make the plugin work with Google Webmaster Tools, without messing with where the plugin places the sitemap file.

1) Add an entry to robots.txt that directs the system to find the Sitemap file and authorize it to describe content from the site root directory. By adding a line like:

sitemap: http://yourdomain.tld/wp-content/plugins/simple-google-sitemap-xml/sitemap.xml

This did not work for me, as I could not figure out how to tell Google to read my updated robots.txt file.

2) (What worked for me) Create a symbolic link in the site root directory, to the sitemap.xml file in the plugin directory. In my site root directory I entered:

ln -s wp-content/plugins/simple-google-sitemap-xml/sitemap.xml ./sitemap.xml

Then tell Google Webmaster tools that the sitemap URL is http://yourdomain/sitemap.xml

The only trick to the second option is that your .htaccess file will need to allow symbolic links to be followed if it does not already. With something like:

# enable symbolic links
Options +FollowSymLinks

I hope this helps…
-Bryan

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I have the same problem. If I paste in the URL given in WordPress into the Google Sitemap it finds the sitemap.xml file, but says the URL’s are not allowed. If I copy the sitemap.xml file to the root directory for this domain then Google accepts it.

This means that it won’t get updated automatically as the pages change, and I will have to manually copy the file every time!

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Same problem for me. Google only seems to accept the site map when it’s located on the home directory.

Any help?

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Alex….thanks for the quick response. Now, with embarrassment, I must tell you that google is recognizing the sitemaps in the plugin directory. I will still see how you got around the write to root error I encountered. There seems to be some activity at the big G, as several of my sites have complete lost the link to the sitemap, but that is a problem for tomorrow.

There is mis-spelling of the monthly option for the frequency settings. monthly not montly needs the h. Google rejects the sitemap if the value is wrong. Not a crisis.

Thanks for the great plugin.

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Love the plugin thanks!

I did have to make a slight alteration to the source code for my site though making the plugin store the Sitemap in ABSPATH, moving it to the root of wordpress blog, as when I submitted the Google Sitemap to Google Webmaster tools it said a lot of the urls were invalid.

After doing this and re-submitting it there were no errors. Just thought I’d let you know

Thanks again!

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Hi, I am trying to install the plugin but following error pops up:

Allowed memory size of 268435456 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 7358390 bytes)

My database size is quite huge, surpassing 150MB.

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Thanks a lot for the update!! Now, Google Webmasters tools detect correctly my sitemap!

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Thank you for this plugin!

Question: How can I make it show the newest articles in Google News?
It shows about 8 articles, but except the first ones, they’re all old.

As soon as I write a new one, the newest one is replaced,, the older ones stay there.

Sitemap:
http://www.gossipgirlz.de/sitemap.xml

Google News shown:
http://www.google.de/#hl=de&q=site:www.gossipgirlz.de&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbo=u&tbs=nws:1&source=og&sa=N&tab=wn&fp=4e3d8c7f047d81a8

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REGARDING MY PREVIOUS POSTING:

I AM TESTING AND FOUND THAT WHEN I CREATE A PAGE WORDPRESS ADDS TWO MORE PAGES EG:

http://www.bigdaddy.za.net/just-govern/
2011-01-13
always
0.5

http://www.bigdaddy.za.net/2011/01/13/251/
2011-01-13
always
0.5

http://www.bigdaddy.za.net/2011/01/13/252/
2011-01-13
always
0.5

IF ONE DELETES THE ACTUAL PAGE THE OTHERS DONT GET DELETED.

PLEASE HELP

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I used this plugin in my website agraj[dot]co[uk], really its working nice as i required.

thanks for a great plugin.

- Agraj

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Plugin could not be activated because it triggered a fatal error.

Fatal error: Cannot redeclare paypal_donate() in /var/www/***/data/www/***/wp-content/plugins/simple-google-sitemap-xml/simple-google-sitemap-xml.php on line 266

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Hi Robert,

No, the plugin only lists all your website’s blog posts and pages into a valid XML sitemap that you can publish to Google Webmaster tools or any other tool.

Hope that helps !

Alex

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2.Go to the plugin’s admin page, and there you can copy/paste the URL of your XML sitemap

where in wordpress do i paste the url?
in the footer.php??? or where?

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Greetings! I have a code-related request.

Can you please consistently use <?php in your code instead of a mix of that and the short form (<?)?

It's recommended that servers be configured to disable support for the short form and, when that is the case, your plugin breaks in a very ugly fashion. Changing all <? to <?php fixed it again, though.

Great work otherwise. Thanks!

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Hi Alex,

Thanks for fixing that! It looks like you missed one, though. Line 443 is still just <? which prevented the plugin from activating after update. Changing it to <?php fixed it.

Best,
Jamie

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Hi

I get another error during activation;
wp-content/plugins/simple-google-sitemap-xml/simple-google-sitemap-xml.php on line 33

I have the latest version.

/Tobias

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it’s broken with PHP5.3~

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Hi Ken,

Very strange that it doesn’t work on PHP 5.3 because I have the plugin running on many websites that are on my server which has 5.3.2.

You’re running the latest update of the plugin (1.4.2)?

Alex

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Hi Alex,

I have installed the plugin, but how do I get it to show on my WP-site?

Thanks for your help,
Clifton

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Hi.

My WP blog is in a sub-directory of my domain. (www.example.com/blog).

Will this plugin create a sitemap for only the WordPress installation or does it includes the entire site.?

How do I set it up to include everything, not only the WordPress installation?

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I did the automatic download inside wordpress. There was no GUI interface. Just code?

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I seemed to have found a solution after reading through more comments and google help. My site name in WM tools did not contain the WWW, however the sitemap does therefore it just couldn’t detect the Urls in the site map. I created a new site in google, this one with the www and the site map processed just fine. Seems like google treats thus other version like is a completely different site. It doesn’t seem to matter for regular sites, as those sitemaps use relative paths. Do I need both versions in google? Do i need two sitemaps, one where I edit out the Www references. I can see this working, but what happens when I update the blog with a new post or something ?

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For some reason the plugin is setting links to http://whathelmetcam.com instead of http://www.whathelmetcam.com. The settings in wordpress are fine, where can I manually edit the plugin to change this.

Cheers

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I have installed the plug-in and submitted the site map to Google. Google could not download the site map:
« General HTTP error: 404 not found
We encountered an error while trying to access your Sitemap. Please ensure your Sitemap follows our guidelines and can be accessed at the location you provided and then resubmit. »
I have check via ftp and I can see the file at the url:
http://www.whitealligatordesign.com/http://www.whitealligatordesign.com/wp-content/plugins/simple-google-sitemap-xml/sitemap.xml.
If you put that url into a browser you do get a 404 error…??
Can you help?

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I don’t understand what your Parameters mean. The sitemap.xml doesn’t seem to be updating at all when I post a new message. What should I set the parameters to so that they update the xml file every time I post? What does Priority mean? Is that counting hours?

Do you want to enable the last changed attribute ? It is set to disabled by default. ****ENABLED?

Do you want to enable the priority and the change frequency attributes ? It is set to disabled by default. ****ENABLED?

Priority ****1? Frequency ****ALWAYS?

Priority ****1? Frequency ****ALWAYS?

Thanks for your help.

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I need to move my « Google Sitemap XML » to « in my website’s root folder » from « in the plugin folder ». How can I do this??

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p.s. – I tried installing with wordpress and that didn’t work. I tried downloading and installed via an FTP software, and that didn’t allow me to activate it either.

Thanks.
Nedda

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Change permission for ur files from Ftp it will work…

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Am I correct in assuming that any new posts etc are automatically pinged to Google, Yahoo and Bing? Thanks, TW

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Hello!

@Tony : I’ve sent you an email today! )

@Jeff : The sitemap.xml pulls the get_option( ‘siteurl’ ) URL, which is your website’s URL.

Thanks guys for trying this plugin and don’t forget to rate it on WP!

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How long does it take to delete my error, does google re-index my site…not sure if that is the right term

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I downloaded (and installed) XML Sitemap.
How can I check that the extension works ?

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Hello,
I have installed your « Simple Google Sitemap XML » plugin in my WordPress 3.3 MultiSite system. My MultiSite is setup to use separate directories for each site. As far as I can tell, your plugin is not compatible with MultiSite yet. I can see that the « sitemap.xml » file stored in the web root only contains elements for the blog site that has been most recently updated.

I suspect that your plugin is overwriting the file each time a new post is published on a site. Perhaps it would make sense for the plugin to be aware of the multiple sites and generate a new sitemap.xml file containing elements for all sites in the WordPress install when a new post is published on any site.

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Your plugin works great, except it duplicates my home page URL entry in the site map, generating this error from Google: « Duplicate URL. This URL is a duplicate of another URL in the sitemap. Please remove it and resubmit. » I can edit the duplicate line out, but then the next time I post a page the plugin will overwrite my correction with a new file, including the duplicate line. How can I prevent the plugin from duplicating my home page URL?

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Hi there, i’ve installed this plugin and my homepage is not showing in the sitemap at all? Just the posts and pages.

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Hi Alex,
What a brilliant plugin. I’ve only been using WP for a few days, and your plugin is probably the easiest one I’ve used so far by a country mile. The most difficult part was actually trying to find the Test/Submit Site-map Button, on the Google Web Tools site. It worked first time. I’m pretty happy with myself, and really glad there are guys like you on the internet that can write code like this.
A Big Big Thanks, from Wales.

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Thanks, Knut. I was looking for exact this error. Saved me an hour.

Regards

Alex

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