Gavin Pearce

I just started using the XML Sitemap Generator plugin by Arne Brachhold, however was having problems with the default install.

For some reason, no matter what CHOMD/permissions I gave the directory, or the files, it kept telling me: “There was a problem writing your sitemap file. Make sure the file exists and is writable.”

I done the following to solve this:

1. Create two completely blank files, sitemap.xml and sitemap.xml.gz.
2. Upload them to your website root directory.
3. CHMOD these files as 666 or 777 (sometimes 666 didn’t work for me!)
4. Now visit the Settings section of the Plugin – scroll down to “Location of your sitemap file“.
5. Pick “Custom location“
6. Enter the absolute path to the file we just uploaded with the filename at the end. (something like /var/www/example.net/sitemap.xml).
7. Enter the web path to your file (something like http://www.example.net/sitemap.xml).

If this still didn’t work, CHMOD the parent folder (e.g the folder that holds these files) to 777 also. Though, as this isn’t the best security configuration, only do this if the above didn’t work.