xml-sitemap error, make sure the file exists and is writable
December 18, 2008 · Article by Sriraj · 9 Comments
If you got the above message when trying to implement the XML sitemap then you have the solution here.
I’m not touching the plugin installation part here as it is very well described by the plugin owner arne brachhold.
‘Make sure the file exists and is writable’.If we go by the sentence we cleary understand that some file is missing.You may think of downloading the plugin again but it wont solve your problem.
When the plugin creats a sitemap,it should have some file to write it on right?To provide the plugin the file it needs just use your FTP.
Open your FTP and create a new folder on the server side in the root directory and name it as sitemap.xml.Create another folder similarly and name it as sitemap.xml.gz which will be created in zipped format.
Some FTP’s like filezilla may not have the option of making a new folder on server side.In such cases simply open your notepad on your desktop and make an empty file and name it as sitemap.xml.Similarly make an empty file and name it as sitemap.xml.gz.Then transfer them to your server using the FTP into the root directory(public_html).Make sure they are writable.You can find how to make file writable here.
After you’ve done that come back to settings and click on XML-sitemap.You will again see two red coloured lines in the beginning but hold your patience and click on build your sitemap manually.
There you go,your sitemap has been successfully built,wasn’t it? Finally your sitemap shold look something like this .
If your problem did not find a solution even after this then do not hesitate to put a comment below.
Thanks, worked for me with one change to your instructions,
“Open your FTP and create a new folder on the server side”
In my case I created “files” and not folders as suggested.
Yeh, that should have been a ‘file’ and not a ‘folder’. Too lazy to correct that now.
And another thing, when I tried open
http://www.karambakkudi.com/sitemap.xml
it shows like this
XML Parsing Error: no element found
Location: http://www.karambakkudi.com/sitemap.xml
Line Number 1, Column 1:
I don’t see that error when I open your sitemap. Infact I don’t see anything.
Did you upload 2 empty files with names sitemap.xml and sitemap.xml.gz to your root directory? (public_html /sitemap.xml) .
Pfff, I visited your site now and found that your language is Tamil (I guess?) and your URL’s too are in un-known language. I guess that was the parsing issue.
Hi, Mr.Sriraj,
I’m raj from Malaysia. I tried your way. But, i still can’t solve that problem. It is still showing the same thing. Please help me.
Thanks.
Thanks for the nice and clear instructions. Your post helped me resolve my issue.
i made all changes. created new two file as you said. i made them writable. but i still got this two warnings
There was a problem writing your sitemap file. Make sure the file exists and is writable. Learn more
There was a problem writing your zipped sitemap file. Make sure the file exists and is writable. Learn more
i tried more and more
i tried every solution. but coulnd handle it
wp 2.7 with quadro theme
Did you try ‘rebuild manually’ function after you made those changes?