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#8564 – Doesn't create sitemap, and no Google speed data

Posted in ‘4SEO’
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Friday, 04 March 2022 04:52 UTC
dsp2022

One week after installing no sitemap has been create, it just says 'Sitemap creation is in progress.'

 

Also no Google speed data at all.  We were very interested in that, it was key part of buying it.

(Also problem that by default (it can be switched off) it created a 404 sitemap that doesn't exist and puts it live, and then updates robots to the 404.

Right now this is not doing what we were told it could do before we bought it.

Friday, 04 March 2022 08:25 UTC
wb_weeblr

Hi

One week after installing no sitemap has been create, it just says 'Sitemap creation is in progress.'

Have you tried loading the sitemap in your browser? the sitemap is finally created when someone, user or robots, requests it.

 it created a 404 sitemap that doesn't exist

What kind of 404 do you get? a server 404 or a Joomla one? most likely, you are using Admin Tools or similar, which blocks .xml files by default. See this paragraph in 4SEO documentation on extensions blocking the sitemap.

Please provide a full and real URL to your site and I can confirm that in a second.

Also no Google speed data at all. 

That I would have to check, again, not possible without at least the full and real URL of the site.

Best regards

Yannick Gaultier

weeblr.com / @weeblr

 

 
Friday, 04 March 2022 10:08 UTC
dsp2022

Thanks Yannick.

Here is the sitemap link it gives:   https://xxxx.com/sitemap-4seo.xml

I don't think xml is blocked, it just hasn't been created yet (and the system says it hasn't).  Test example of xml  https://xxxx.com/test.xml

Many thanks.

 

Friday, 04 March 2022 10:32 UTC
wb_weeblr

Hi

I don't think xml is blocked, it just hasn't been created yet (and the system says it hasn't).

Actually it is blocked. This is the server error page coming from your CPanel. Which means the request is blocked before it reaches Joomla (if it was not blocked, and the sitemap was not ready or broken somewho, you would see your regular Joomla error page).

So the problem usually comes from either:

- Admin tools: if you have it, it blocks xml rendered by Joomla. By default.

- your .htaccess: older .htaccess that came with some joomla 3.x versions also blocked xml files. This was bad and only for a few Joomla versions, it was removed rather quickly but it your site was created then, it will have that lines that only allow a limited number of files extensions to be passed to Joomla for rendering.

Test example of xml  https://xxxx.com/test.xml

I assume you created test.xml at the root of your site. But that's not what we are talking about. the /sitemap-4seo.xml will neer exist as a physical site. It's rendered through Joomla, like any other page of your site. And this is what Admin Tools (and some .htaccess, and a few other less common extensions).

Once you have that solved, you should be able to see the sitemap. The cached data is actually created very quickly, a few minutes after the first analysis has completed.

As for the Core Web Vitals measurement, the measurement code is added to your pages:

So the only reason I can see that no data is recorded is if the first analysis has not been completed yet (sitemap also does not render of course until the first site analysis has completed).

Did you run an analysis from the admin? what does the dashboard says about analysis completion?

Best regards

Yannick Gaultier

weeblr.com / @weeblr

 

 

 

 
Friday, 04 March 2022 13:06 UTC
dsp2022

Thanks for the reply.

It says: Site analysis, Auto, 47%, Completion - but it's been running for a week.

Pages also says: Total 231, Pending 266

The system is saying the sitemap hasn't been created yet 'sitemap creation is in progress' - you mention the first analysis has to complete, so maybe that is the culprit.

Admin Tools is not installed on the site.

 

 

Friday, 04 March 2022 13:09 UTC
dsp2022

Actually a fast update.

It is saying 100% complete, 231 pages (ran a manual check).  No sitemap - just sitemap in progress.  It has had this status before, about 24 hours after installing.

Friday, 04 March 2022 14:01 UTC
wb_weeblr

Hi

All the above is totally normal and expected:

It says: Site analysis, Auto, 47%, Completion - but it's been running for a week.

Here is how it works: 4SEO crawl (analyze) your home page then all the links it found there. Then in turns it crawls each of these new pages, find links in them, and the process repeats until there's no more pages.

Once this process as completed once, the data for the sitemap (and things like canonical links) can be generated and cached.

Now on each new page load on the frontend, 4SEO will check the page content (with a hash) and compare it to that in the database. If a change is detected (such as a page title, description, a new image, more or less links,...) it will put that page up for re-crawling.

And that re-crawl will happen automatically in the background. This is why after the first analysis has completed, you will always see new pages pending, and completion will almost never be at 100%. Because it's constantly re-checking - in the background - the page contents.

 No sitemap - just sitemap in progress.  It has had this status before, about 24 hours after installing.

The site has only a couple hundred pages, and if it has a little bit of traffic on the frontend, I think the analysis - and the sitemap - was ready after maybe a couple of hours. Can be more if you have little traffic.

For your sitemap, as long as you do not fix your .htaccess, you will still get that error. The sitemap is actually ready, it's just waiting for someone to load it.

If you do not have AdminTools or any similar extension, maybe you can paste your .htacess here and I can have a look.

Best regards

Yannick Gaultier

weeblr.com / @weeblr

 

 

 

 

 
Monday, 04 April 2022 05:34 UTC
system
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