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piyush123
PostPosted: Fri Jul 30, 2010 8:56 am 
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I am having this continuous problem with Google Webmaster rejecting my XML and HTML sitemaps generated from XMAP. I keep getting this message:

Unsupported file format
Your Sitemap does not appear to be in a supported format. Please ensure it meets our Sitemap guidelines and resubmit.

On the Joomla Xmap side, I get this error when I try to view the XML sitemap


XML Parsing Error: XML or text declaration not at start of entity
Location: http://www.example.com/index.php?option=com ... 1&view=xml
Line Number 1, Column 35:

<!--[if lte IE 6]> <![endif]--> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

I am very new to sitemap creation in Joomla. Can someone please help, been tackling this for two weeks.

Thanks


Last edited by Leftfield on Fri Jul 30, 2010 9:03 am, edited 2 times in total.
Mod Edit: No www.xxx.com for URL. No manual signature. No all Caps Lock. Please update you title.


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lopoBL
PostPosted: Fri Jul 30, 2010 9:06 am 
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Hi,

when you are submitting link to sitemap you should not include your site URL. Link should be like this:
Code:
index.php?option=com_xmap&sitemap=1&view=xml
and not like this
Code:
http://example.com/index.php?option=com_xmap&sitemap=1&view=xml


Best,
Boris

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Kampp
PostPosted: Tue Dec 14, 2010 2:37 pm 
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That does not work either. The following error is given by Google in version 1.2.10 of Xmap:

Line 4 Missing XML tag. This required tag is missing. Please add it and resubmit.

This is also reported here:
http://joomla.vargas.co.cr/en/forum?vie ... 6500#p6500

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Ron S
PostPosted: Tue Dec 14, 2010 3:54 pm 
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http://www.search-friendly-web-design.com/blog/joomla-rewrite-xmap-url-to-sitemapxml-sef-url provide a useful guide pertaining to this problem, as following:

"From the component menu, click on Xmap, then click on the options tab of your sitemap. Here you will see the urls for your sitemaps. Lets use the xml as an example.
Click on the xml link, then copy the url and remove your domain name. The default one looks like this:
/index.php?option=com_xmap&sitemap=1&view=xml

This can easily be fixed in your .htaccess file.
To Rewrite the Xmap URL
First you need to check the actual url of the sitemap you want to change.
This may be slightly different depending on your version of xmap, your current htaccess rules and if you are running any sef extensions.
To rewrite the example above, you would add this to your htaccess file.
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/sitemap.xml
RewriteRule .* /index.php?option=com_xmap&sitemap=1&view=xml
Now, when you visit your site at http://www.mysite.com/sitemap.xml your xml sitemap will be displayed.
This is the first place a search engine will look for a sitemap xml file without you submiting it directly to them! "

Note: Remember to make a site backup before your do the rewrite.

In addition to the above, I would suggest you to add this line to your Robot.txt for the purpose of sitemap auto submission to Search Engine.
sitemap: http://www.YOURDOMAIN.com/sitemap.xml

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Ron S
PostPosted: Tue Dec 14, 2010 3:56 pm 
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piyush123 wrote:
I am having this continuous problem with Google Webmaster rejecting my XML and HTML sitemaps generated from XMAP. I keep getting this message:

Unsupported file format
Your Sitemap does not appear to be in a supported format. Please ensure it meets our Sitemap guidelines and resubmit.

On the Joomla Xmap side, I get this error when I try to view the XML sitemap


XML Parsing Error: XML or text declaration not at start of entity
Location: http://www.example.com/index.php?option=com ... 1&view=xml
Line Number 1, Column 35:

<!--[if lte IE 6]> <![endif]--> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

I am very new to sitemap creation in Joomla. Can someone please help, been tackling this for two weeks.

Thanks



http://www.search-friendly-web-design.com/blog/joomla-rewrite-xmap-url-to-sitemapxml-sef-url provide a useful guide pertaining to this problem, as following:

"Xmap is a great automatic sitemap generator for the joomla content management system.
It produces HTML (For your users) XML (for search engines) and news (Please fill me in!)
The URL's to these sitemaps however are not so search engine friendly.
 
This can easily be fixed in your .htaccess file.

From the component menu, click on Xmap, then click on the options tab of your sitemap. Here you will see the urls for your sitemaps. Lets use the xml as an example.
Click on the xml link, then copy the url and remove your domain name. The default one looks like this:
/index.php?option=com_xmap&sitemap=1&view=xml

This can easily be fixed in your .htaccess file.
To Rewrite the Xmap URL
First you need to check the actual url of the sitemap you want to change.
This may be slightly different depending on your version of xmap, your current htaccess rules and if you are running any sef extensions.
To rewrite the example above, you would add this to your htaccess file.
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/sitemap.xml
RewriteRule .* /index.php?option=com_xmap&sitemap=1&view=xml
Now, when you visit your site at http://www.mysite.com/sitemap.xml your xml sitemap will be displayed.
This is the first place a search engine will look for a sitemap xml file without you submiting it directly to them! "

Note: Remember to make a site backup before your do the rewrite.

In addition to the above, I would suggest you to add this line to your Robot.txt for the purpose of sitemap auto submission to Search Engine.
sitemap: http://www.YOURDOMAIN.com/sitemap.xml

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Kampp
PostPosted: Tue Dec 14, 2010 4:21 pm 
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Thank you for you input. But this sadly has nothing to do with the problem.

You described how to make sure that the Google finds the sitemap, but the problem described by both me and "piyush123" is that the sitemap is not accepted by Google. Thus Google has found it, but can't read it.

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rtenny
PostPosted: Sun Jan 02, 2011 12:49 am 
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I am using xmaps for many sites without fail. But today I have the same problem as described above. Google reads the site map but rejects it due to unsupported format.

Any Ideas or help would be appreciated.
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foodgy
PostPosted: Wed Jan 19, 2011 11:43 am 
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same problem.
xmap 1.2.10
Joomla 1.5.22

google: Line 4 Missing XML tag. This required tag is missing. Please add it and resubmit.
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Kampp
PostPosted: Wed Jan 19, 2011 12:34 pm 
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I have solved it...

You can make sure that the sitemap is validated here (it needs to be):
http://www.validome.org/google/validate

You need to validate: http://youdomain.com/index.php?option=c ... 1&view=xml


The problem it that there is a conflict in the .htaccess file when using ReWrite as suggested in another post.
I solved it by forwarding in my .htaccess file by using a Redirect instead:

Code:
# Forward to sitemap
Redirect /sitemap.xml http://youdomain.com/index.php?option=com_xmap&sitemap=1&view=xml


The path you should enter in Google Webmaster is therefore the default path used by searchengines. This is: http://youdomain.com/sitemap.xml

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foodgy
PostPosted: Wed Jan 19, 2011 1:20 pm 
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Kampp wrote:
I have solved it...

You can make sure that the sitemap is validated here (it needs to be):
http://www.validome.org/google/validate

You need to validate: http://youdomain.com/index.php?option=c ... 1&view=xml


The problem it that there is a conflict in the .htaccess file when using ReWrite as suggested in another post.
I solved it by forwarding in my .htaccess file by using a Redirect instead:

Code:
# Forward to sitemap
Redirect /sitemap.xml http://youdomain.com/index.php?option=com_xmap&sitemap=1&view=xml


The path you should enter in Google Webmaster is therefore the default path used by searchengines. This is: http://youdomain.com/sitemap.xml


sitemap is valid, but htaccess tweak didnt work
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Kampp
PostPosted: Wed Jan 19, 2011 1:25 pm 
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  • What is your site name?
  • What path are you using to test it with? It should be http://yoursite.com/sitemap.xml
  • What did you write in the htaccess?
  • Did you put the htaccss code in the bottom of the file?

It takes some time before Google accepts the new path.

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treehugger73
PostPosted: Tue Feb 08, 2011 6:54 pm 
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Kampp wrote:
  • What is your site name?
  • What path are you using to test it with? It should be http://yoursite.com/sitemap.xml
  • What did you write in the htaccess?
  • Did you put the htaccss code in the bottom of the file?

It takes some time before Google accepts the new path.


Hi there - hope you don't mind me jumping in here but I am having the same problem

Joomla 1.5.22
Xmap 1.2.10

I altered the .htaccess file and re uploaded it to the server


I also tried it omitting the www
Code at the bottom of the file
Submitted to Google, failed
Any other ideas?


Last edited by treehugger73 on Wed Feb 09, 2011 11:18 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Kampp
PostPosted: Wed Feb 09, 2011 11:08 am 
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What does Google tell you about the path in the webmasters site?
Are you sure that your webhost allows Redirects?
What happens if you use the RewriteRule described in an earlier post?

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treehugger73
PostPosted: Wed Feb 09, 2011 11:18 am 
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Hi thanks for your reply. I got fed up and used another site map generator.
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Braceface2007
PostPosted: Thu Mar 10, 2011 9:09 am 
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And i know exactly what the problem is, i have the same problem: the real issue is that when you submit the URL to google webmasters , it automatically inserts &amp into the URL, if you check the URL after google inserted &amp, it won`t work, so basically for google this URL doesn`t lead anywhere. Now, in my case the .htaccess solution didn`t work, because of the host probably, because no solution involving .htaccess ever worked for me being on this host.
I wonder if there is any other solution to redirecting the URL so that it wouldn`t contain & , because if it does google will insert &amp again.

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chintancm
PostPosted: Mon Apr 04, 2011 2:13 pm 
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I also had similar problem...and sometimes it was giving me error on line 2 when opening from xmap component from joomla backend.

I validated my sitemap using
http://www.webmasterwebtools.com/sitema ... /index.php

and found that joomla's system cache plugin was creating some problem and so I turned it off and now google accepts the sitemap.

Regards,
Chintan
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treehugger73
PostPosted: Mon Apr 04, 2011 3:21 pm 
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I'm glad you fixed this but it's still not working for me - system cache has always been off.
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farlyx
PostPosted: Thu Apr 07, 2011 6:01 pm 
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Okay guys, I also have the same problem like you, which is I put the complete URL when submitting the google sitemap.
After that I checked it's status, and get error 404, and checked out that the link was wrong, because it became like this:
Code:
http://www.yourdomain.com/http://www.yourdomain.com/index.php?option=com_xmap&sitemap=1&view=xml

So, I change to only add this url:
Code:
index.php?option=com_xmap&sitemap=1&view=xml


Now my sitemap is up and running

I hope this is useful
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treehugger73
PostPosted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 6:07 am 
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My sitemap has only ever been added to Google as index.php?option=com_xmap&sitemap=1&view=xml.
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Kampp
PostPosted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 7:14 am 
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That would be a mistake treehugger73...
You should always aim for submitting the URL http://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml as this is what all search engines use by default. Therefore your site will end up working not only at google.

This tread is therefore also about how to make sure that this path works (though htaccess). See my previous posts...

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treehugger73
PostPosted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 7:24 am 
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But that is the sitemap url generated by Xmap.
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Kampp
PostPosted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 7:36 am 
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Yes... that is why you should make a redirect or rewrite in the htaccess script, so that you are able to submit http://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml to Google instead of the other one.

Everything is mentioned in this thread here: viewtopic.php?p=2381732#p2381732

If you don't do this, Google will not allow a bunch of features.

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treehugger73
PostPosted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 7:43 am 
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OK - Thanks for your reply.
I'll look into this some more though I stopped using Xmap and am using Google's sitemap at the moment which I think I'm happy with.
Is there any advantage of using Xmap that you know of??
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Kampp
PostPosted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 7:53 am 
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There is not a specific advantage of using Xmap. The only real point is that your sitemap should end up being found here: http://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml

Xmap gives the advantage of having the system compiling the sitemap and also that there is a sitemap on the site for users (and some serach engines). But other components can do that.

The theory is the same no matter what. Creating the htaccess change would be a good idear no matter what if needed (like with Xmap).

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Last edited by Kampp on Fri Apr 08, 2011 8:12 am, edited 2 times in total.

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treehugger73
PostPosted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 8:01 am 
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OK - thanks for your input, much appreciated.
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kballou
PostPosted: Fri Apr 22, 2011 10:32 pm 
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This may not be what is causing the problem, but it is worth looking at.

The XML Standard specifies that if an XML document contains an XML declaration (the part that starts with "<?xml"), there must be absolutely nothing before the opening '<' character. Nothing -- no comment, not even whitespace or a blank line! A very strict XML parser or validator will reject such a document because "<?xml" is invalid syntax anywhere except as the very first characters of the input.
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jnodwell
PostPosted: Mon May 02, 2011 10:56 am 
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I am having this issue with xmap today. I have had my xmap sitemap redirected to mydomain.com/sitemap.xml for months now with no incident. Today, google webmasters tools tells me that it can't load the sitemap due to an http redirect 302 error.
Image
The problem is not with the xmap extension but rather with the host. They must be redirecting and serving up mirrored content inside their network.

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