I have a similar problem, although I don't have vBSEO installed (other than this addon). I was able to login last night, but now, no matter what I try to change the password to, it doesn't accept it and keeps looping around wanting me to login. Other than that, it seems to be working ok.

Very nice work vbseo, thank you for publicly releasing. One question however... Our site has a directory structure of ROOT/FORUM/ where there are a few custom scripts which reside in the root directory and need to be included in the files generated by the VBSEO Sitemap Generator script. I can tell it's something to do with the "Sitemap Files URL" setting in AdminCP however what exactly do I enter here? Can i simply enter http://www.example/com and it will now include all root files as well?

Please advise and thank you :)

I'm having the same problem here too, I've installed correctly and generated the sitemaps. But I can't either access them anywhere, I dunno where should they appear or what to add them?

Do I have to have vBSEO installed?

Please advice.

No.

I solved my problem above. You need to use the .htaccess if on apache server and if on windows server need to make an httpd.ini file either of these will redirect url requests from root directory to the /data directory in installed files where sitemaps are generated

i get Internal Server Error

how can i fix this?

mrcrx,

you should remove all files from that folder then.

Pitman,

do you get "Login failed" message?

Terminatoronly,

try to add "RewriteBase /forum/" line in your .htaccess (modify it with your forums folder name).

should we have vbseo 3.x to install this hack. Or can we install without vbseo.

What to give in the google webmaster for sitemap. If i give this url is gives a error. And this file is not present in the root directory. Where is this file located should we create it.
http://www.einvestorsforum.com/sitem...p_index.xml.gz

I run a social networking site with more than 50,000 members since August 2006. I run vBulletin as my forum software and I have vbseo. Is there any way for me to have vbseo not only create google/yahoo site maps, but also include all of the profiles of my members?

The member profile link would be something like this:
www.domain.com/view_profile.php?member_id=2500

Each person has a non dynamic link such as

www.domain.com/2500
or some people who have changed their name have it even better such as:
www.domain.com/Chris

So does anyone know of how I could edit this plugin to incorporate member profiles?

Chris

Isn't it just a setting in the mod's options to include member profiles in the sitemap?

I missed this part. I now have two tasks listed for this add-on. The older one can be disabled but no longer has an option to delete.

How do I get rid of it?

Never mind: deleted it using phpMyAdmin.

Addendum: ^^^ which turned out to be a bad idea. I'm not sure why this task has no description but it seems to be required for compression of the sitemap files and perhaps other functions. Reinstalled to add it back in.

It would be nice if this had something to describe its prupose.

Hello,

I have installed a new version of this mod into VB 3.6 and it appears to be working. The sitemap was generated and saved to the /data folder.

When I attempted to enter the url of the sitemap into google webmaster site (ie: http://www.myforums.com/sitemap_index.xml.gz) it states that the file can not be found.

I pasted a copy of the sitemap_index.xml.gz under the /forums directory to see if it works and it does.

Is there something I need to change in the .htaccess file ?

Thanks,

Yes. See the instructions for the mod.

Since installing this and sending Google a sitemap every day for the past month, my search result ranking (for specific terms like "bass guitar") have dropped. For the past 3+ years I've been in the top few results for 'bass guitar'. Now I'm not even on the first page anymore.

Am I out of line blaming this mod? My google PageRank has remained steady at 6/10... I'm sending Google a 4 million URL sitemap everyday - maybe it's too much data?

Yes. All this add-on does is create a sitemap. If your rankings have dropped, it's because of factors having to do with Google, not the add-on.

The fact that public PR is constant is irrelevant, especially since it may not even accurately reflect actual PR. Higher PR does, however, generally increase the frequency of spidering. Beyond that, your rankings depend on "over 100 factors" - and one of the biggest is what's happening for that specific search term on other sites also ranking for the search term.

Note that a sitemap doesn't guarantee that Googlebot will change it's crawling patterns.

Thanks for the info.

One thing I've noticed is that the 'top' url in the sitemap I generate is my forum URL "www.mysite.com/forum". But I use vbadvanced with a homepage of "www.mysite.com". vbSEO is installed in my forum directory. I have set the sitemap URL set to my root homepage (www.mysite.com). I have also enabled the vba addon. Still though the root URL is listed as www.mysite.com/forum. Google obviously knows my homepage - but is it important for the sitemap to 'get it right' ?

I don't use either vBadvanced or vBSEO (except for the sitemap add-on).

However, this may help:

How to ensure that your sitemaps can be found by ANY search engine...

Discovering Sitemaps
Brent Hands, Program Manager, Live Search

This is also endorsed by Yahoo! -

Webmasters Can Now Auto-Discover With Sitemaps

Great script, thank you :)

Sorry - I didn't mean to say I had vbSEO installed - just this sitemap mod. The sitemap autodiscovery protocol is very interesting - thanks.

I get a lot of different answers reading through these threads... I'm not really concerned about using a vbadvanced addon as I only have one vba page (my homepage). But for those who's home page is not their forum index, how should be ideally go about getting our root home page listed as the sitemap's top level location?

See my post above: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....5&postcount=98

I understand, and have no problem with engines finding my sitemap. My concern is that in the sitemap, the 'homepage' is:

<url>
<loc>http://www.mysite.com/forum/</loc>
<priority>1</priority>
<lastmod>2007-05-10T10:10:07+00:00</lastmod>
<changefreq>daily</changefreq>
</url>


And my 'real' homepage of 'www.mysite.com' is not listed in the map. Maybe I have no reason to be concerned? I'm not sure how literally these sitemaps are interpreted.

newforum,

your sitemap URL is: http://www.einvestorsforum.com/sitemap_index.xml.gz

kontrabass,

you can add your homepage in extra-urls.txt file.

Great script, thank you

but how can i uninstall it in future???

Sorry for all the questions... So what exactly is the purpose of the "Sitemap Files URL" setting in v2.0? I don't notice any difference if I leave this at default or enter my main root url...

If you want your sitemap in the default location, leave it blank. If you want to specifiy where you want the add-on to generat the sitemap, enter that URL.

baghdad4ever,

yes - you can uninstall xml product and remove mod's files.

Should i be having to Copy the "sitemap_index.xml.gz" from the vbseo_sitemap/data on to the root directory before i submit them ?

I did and submited to both Google and Yahoo seemed to work good , If this is the practice to foloow how often shall i do this?

On the bottom of the instructions it says "Using your browser, visit: http://www.yoursite.com/vB-root/vbseo_sitemap/. "

So I assume you drop the vbseo_sitemap"folder" on to the root How ever google and yahoo can only accept the xml files from the root directory

I think i done something wrong helpppppp

lol - DM I'm not quite understanding - do you have this installed or are you having a problem with where to install it, or what?

I dont know either ...LOL I resorted to joing the Seo forum..

For a good Laff

http://www.vbseo.com/f44/newbie-here...o-hicky-13619/

No. Leave it where it is and either use the included .htaccess file or add the lines specified in https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....5&postcount=98 to your robots.txt file.

If you do this, you'll have to do it daily, or however often you have the cron job creating the sitemap files. Why do it the hard way? See above.

Not true. The add-on includes instructions for redirecting to the vbseo_sitemap directory - add the lines to .htaccess. Or see my post above to tell Google, Yahoo, and MSN where to find your sitemap file.

You should be accustomed to that by now. Read the thread.

I had to uninstall this My server does not allow changes in the .htaccesss file

DM

Hmm... So theoretically, I would create a folder like "sitemap_data" in my www root, chmod it to 777, and then put in "http://www.mysite.com/sitemap_data/" into the URL setting field?

And then for autodiscovery I'd just put "sitemap: http://www.mysite.com/sitemap_data" into my robots.txt I guess...

So it sounds like the previous poster's .htaccess woes are moot ?

Correct. Follow all the instructions for installing the sitemap add-on but omit the .htaccess and use robots.txt to direct the bots.

Thanks for your insight and help :)

Thank you for this hack....it worked just fine.

How do you do this ? wheres the robots.txt and do you mean put it on the root after every generation?

It must be placed in the root folder of the domain or subdomain.

• If your forum is at www.yoursite.com, place the robots.txt file at www.yoursite.com/robots.txt
  
• If your forum is at www.yoursite.com/forum/, you still place the robots.txt file at www.yoursite.com/robots.txt
  
• But if your forum is at forum.yoursite.com, place the robots.txt file at forum.yoursite.com/robots.txt

I do not have a robots.txt that i can see

I moved both the sitemap.xmls the index one and the "1" one to the root due to .htaccess issues
Where is this robot.txt file located ? and is the text regenerated with each update of the sitemaps ?