Quick question, in the install docs it says to upload the .htaccess file.

Do you just upload the single .htaccess file OR the whole htaccess folder?

The folder contains other files, if I just upload the one .htaccess file, these other files won't get uploaded.

Thanks!..

Just the .htaccess file. The other files are readme files only.

But read the posts just above yours: If you already have an .htaccess file, you want to ADD the lines from the add-on .htaccess file to the bottom of the existinfg .htaccess file so you do not overwrite what's already there.

Has anyone managed to get this to work on a GoDaddy hosted site?

I have tried everything that I have found on this post to try to fix this. 1st No matter what I put in the Sitemap Files URL field, i get 404'd when i try to access them. I have tried every different permission combination that I could and nothing. I have moved the files and moved them back. Still nothing. My HTACCESS file is exactly as it should be. Google reports same thing 404 not found no matter where i place the files. **screams** I need help!

Thanks:eek:

I have exactly the same problem and after bugging vbSEO on there forum they finally admitted that unless your host allows PHP files to be used via the mod_rewrite then it won't work.

Often hosts allow mod_rewrite, but NOT for PHP files (GoDaddy for one).

The staff at vbSEO wasted my time saying 'do this' and 'do that' when surely they know that it doesn't work with GoDaddy.

Really disappointed with them, won't be ordering vbSEO now.

i just cant get the prick to work lol.

My sitemap has generated

in the past 1 month. . but it doesnt show any bots download activity.

I tried manually adding the sitemap to "Google Webmaster Tools" but google says the sitemap cannot be found. Also, if i FTP to my root folder, i cant locate the sitemap_1.xml.gz file even though VBSEO says its been created.

I get this error while submitting to google manually :

I dont understand the .gz format, because i think Google requires sitemaps in XML format ?

.gz is gzip, a compressed file format. Google is fine with that

Okay I have a few questions and hopefully someone can explain them to me....

I installed this hack fine and everything seems to be working fine or at least I hope so...
My site map is located at http://www.mysite.net/forums/sitemap_index.xml.gz. I added a robots.txt and put inside http://www.mysite.net/forums/sitemap_index.xml.gz. Well I went to google add my sitemap and put the link in and it loaded.. How will it upload to google automatically? Also whats the point of have .htaccess? Is it needed? Is robots.txt needed or should I get rid of it..? In the vBSEO settings theres a spot for your "Yahoo ID", but I thought this hack doesn't auto upload to yahoo? Whats the point of having the ID?

I saw someone put this for his robots.txt

Is all that necessary or do I just need the Sitemap: http://www. etc..........

Thanks for the much needed help!

--UnknownKind

Hopefully this also clears up the same problems other people are having....

Very nice work! Can't wait to see the results! But I have a couple problems...

My website is running vBulletin in a /forums/ folder (ex: http://www.domain.com/forums/) and I have a normal website in my root (not vBadvanced or some other portal). I added my root website to the extra-urls.txt in hopes that it will be added to the sitemap. I also set my root as the Sitemap URL, expecting the sitemaps (or atleast the sitemap index) to be generated in my root (http://www.domain.com/sitemap_index.xml.gz).

Problem part::
I just ran the scheduled task to see if it would generate a new sitemap index in the root and no dice. It didn't even generate it in the default vBulletin directory (/forums/). The only place that it is stored is http://www.domain.com/forums/vbseo_s...p_index.xml.gz.
And now I just got a few errors in my log complaining that there was no file http://www.domain.com/vbseo_sitemap/...getsitemap.php (no /forums/).

So anyone know what's going on?

The problem was that I had to include "forums/" in the .htaccess instead of just "vbseo_sitemap/..." which I didn't realize until I actually took a look at it :D


But I have another bit... I only want Google and Yahoo! to use the archive, so I disabled use of showthread, showpost, member profiles, etc. and only let the sitemaps include the archive. The reason is that I think that search engines can focus more on the content than menu/other links and plus, Yahoo! Slurps have been creating some decent server load, so I think that it might be better with no advanced GUI. Is this a good idea or not?

And a new problem:

Now that spiders are crawling my archive, some of them are not taking the archive/index.php/ as a directory. I'm getting error logs like "File not found: /forums/archive/f-86.html." I don't want to have to edit the archiving script to include index.php/ in front of every one of its links. I'd much rather use a .htaccess type of thing. Does anyone know how I could do the following in .htaccess?

Redirect anything trying to get a *.html file in the /archive/ directory TO /archive/index.php/%filename%

(Where %filename% is the *.html file that the client was trying to get)

Anyone? :)

Has anyone got this to work on GoDaddy at all?

ok i just realized this mod is storing sitemaps in /vbseo_sitemap/data folder !! how do i make it save it in my root forum directory ??

Look in your Admin CP for the options for this add-on.

i install this hack, but i make "run sitemap generator", i see this problem:
where am i doing false?


edit: i solve this problem through vbseo forums => data chmood777 ;)

WarDoGG,
you should create .htaccess file in your forums folder as described in installation instructions for that, and make sure that your host supports mod_rewrite.

unknownkind,
Sitemap will be re-generated automatically if you have a scheduled task setup in admincp as described.It's required to let your sitemaps "appear" like they are in the forums root, while files are stored in vbseo_sitemap/data/ folder.

Actually, that's no longer true if you use the new sitemaps declaration in the robots.txt file:

where <sitemap_location> is the complete URL of your Sitemap Index File (or your sitemap file, if you don't have an index file). This directive is independent of the user-agent. so as long as it is present in the robots.txt file, all engines will be able to find your sitemaps. I see this as an important extension to the protocol, as it removes the need to individually submit sitemaps to each engine - simply add one line to your robots.txt file, and we will find your new and updated sitemaps automatically.

You might bear this in mind for a next version of this add-on.

Why do I get 404 errors on my forum and in ACP after I've uploaded the .htaccess file?

There looks to be an error in the import xml script. When I tried to import the product I got the following error:

When I look at the import xml script in the cron section here is what is in there:

It looks like the task_vbseo_sitemap_log entry is missing stuff - there's no /phrase and nothing to be added.

At the top of the screen I get this:

I was skeptical but VBSEO has increased our traffic, thread count, posts 3 fold since installing VBSEO - so stoked more people are discovering our site
http://discussion.socalskateparks.com

anyone have any ideas??

My guess would be that you already had an .htaccess file for vBSEO in your forums directory and you overwrote it with the .htaccess file in the vbSEO sitemap distribution. The instructions tell you that if you already have an .htaccess file (which everyone that's already running vBSEO should) then you need to just add 3 lines to the very bottom of it. Here's the note from the installation docs:

I know Steve, I read the instructions.

Problem is, I didn't overwrite any existing .htaccess file because I didn't have an .htaccess file in my forum root, and still don't, since I had to remove the one I uploaded from the zip here for my forum to work again.

I also don't run vBSEO on this forum. :)

Anyone have any other ideas?

djbaxter,

Mm.. what exactly is not true from what I wrote above?
You can specify sitemap in robots.txt, you can submit it to Google webmaster account (to be able to track it) or just send a ping, but sitemap still should be located in the topmost folder. That's why .htaccess entry is required in case if files are stored in a subfolder.

Steve St.Lauren,

please try to uninstall xml product file and reinstall it.

Ohiosweetheart,

please make sure that your host supports mod_rewrite and allows rewrite rules in .htaccess.

I know they allow mod_rewrite, because I have vBSEO on my other site which is on the same host, and have the instructed rewrite in that .htaccess file.

^^^ THAT is what's not true. You can now locate the sitemap file wherever you wish as long as you specifiy the alternate location in the robots.txt file - the robots.txt file must reside in the root folder; the sitemap can be anywhere you like. If you do that, you don't need the mod_rewrite addition to your .htaccess file.

See http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.php#submit_robots

I did and got the same message. I jut removed the cron portion out of the xml file and added the cron job manually. This was on 3.6.7 btw.

I already have a .htaccess file. What do i do if i have one? add it to bottom?

Yes, probably. You need a slight modification if you already have a mod_rewrite instruction in there.

If you see any lines like this:

Add the RewrteRule line AFTER that.

Make sure that ONLY the last RewiteRule statement ends with the following:

For example, a site that contains two RewriteRule statements would look something like this:

Ok thanks but it is not writing the links as SEO, i have zoints SEO installed and its working for example
but its writing to the site map as

Turn off mod_rewrite on the Zoints modification.

Ohiosweetheart,

please try to add "RewriteBase /forums/" line to your .htaccess (replace /forums/ with your folder name).

djbaxter,
As it is said in the sitemap protocol (the page you have linked to):
And couldn't find a mention that sitemap can be located anywhere in case of robots.txt usage.

Hi ,

i have 3 questions :
1 - i have 102,142 Links and it takes 450.17 s !! i think it s not normal . is there anyway that we can set when seo is active forum will be close ?? something like that ?

2 - before i had all Sitemaps in my forum directory , but now they r only in /forum/vbseo_sitemap/data/ ! and i can not locate the last one in Google webmaster page . i did wrong somewhere ??

3 - when i want to Active HOT LINK PROTECTION i get this error : is it about SEO ? or what ?

thanks in advance

Hello,

1. it is suggested to set the execution time for scheduled task to the moment with minimal activity on your forums

2. you should create .htaccess file as described, the files will still be saved in data/ folder, but you will be able to access them in forums root

3. what is your complete .htaccess file contents?

I'm getting a blank page when running the script, i've just moved to a new server,
the PHP limit time to run scripts is 1000 Sec'
what can i do? i really need it back..

I've been using it for a year now..
what to do?

Hello,

do you get any details in server's error log?

no there isn't any thing in the server error log..

about #1 : i found the option in setting : " Delay Execution After Each Sitemap File " but what amount u should suggest me ? is it second or minute or what ? ( default is 0 )

about #2 i : saw that my .htaccess is not available in forum directory !! so i made it again and now it works well .

about #3 :
my site is redirect from public_html to public_html/forum . so i have just one .htaccess in /forum directory and this is is :
is it correct ? or i should have it in root directory too ? thanks

I've fixed the problem, now i have a new problem, in the past i've used vBSEO, it isn;t installed now.
when i'm submitting my sitemaps to google they return errors after downloading the sitemaps -

HTTP Error:
URL:
URL:
URL:
URL:
URL:
Date found: 301 (Moved permanently) [?]
http://www.atraf-f.net/2036039-post12.html
http://www.atraf-f.net/1993365-post23.html
http://www.atraf-f.net/1870981-post55.html
http://www.atraf-f.net/1924662-post12.html
http://www.atraf-f.net/1959712-post6.html
Jun 11, 2007

URLs not followed
When we tested a sample of the URLs from your Sitemap, we found that some URLs were not accessible to Googlebot because they contained too many redirects. Please change the URLs in your Sitemap that redirect and replace them with the destination URL (the redirect target). All valid URLs will still be submitted. [?]

what is this? i don't have any "1959712-post6.html" in my forum..

I also have it -
rrors
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. [?] HTTP Error:
Date found: 404 (Not found) [?]
Jul 6, 2007

but when i'm trying to access the sitemaps it's working ..

but some do work..
sitemap_142.xml.gz Sitemap Web Apr 2, 2007 7 hours ago OK 10000

Mecho,

1. that depends on how is your server load affected. You can try to set it to 20-30 seconds.
3. yes, this is correct.

Thanks iojam