[Pebbled]

Katelynn, I quite understand your comments, it took me some time to figure out what was going on and I'm still not entirely sure!

So, from what I understand, you have your website at www.examplesite.com where your vbadvanced page is displayed, and you have your forums for the site at www.examplesite.com/forums

From what I have read so far is that you have the .htaccess code already installed in the forums folder for rewriting the position of the sitemap - So leave that file where it is

What you need to do is create a new file called .htaccess by duplicating this .htaccess file, then placing it in the root folder, then edit the text within it to display:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^((urllist|sitemap_).*\.(xml|txt)(\.gz)?)$ forums/vbseo_sitemap/vbseo_getsitemap.php?sitemap=$1 [L]

As to the robots.txt file, this is telling search engine robots where the sitemap is.

After you have added the second .htaccess file into the root folder you can change the text in the robots.txt file to view the file in the new position, namely Sitemap: http://www.mysite.com/sitemap_index.xml.gz

Please note I am on a steep learning curve with this, and don't understand .php coding so have no idea what it all means, all I do know is that Google webmaster tools has located the file and has downloaded it (with an error message), so I've nearly cracked it.

I think the problem with this sitemap generator lies with the instructions which presume that the forum will be in the root of the site, ie on the homepage, rather than in a sub-directory.

Those who understand .php coding don't need instructions, those of us who don't understand .php coding need very precise instructions!

Once you have the Google webmaster account you can see whether Google is encountering any problems with the sitemap