New sitemap names are backwards

  • Resolved 7thcircle

    (@7thcircle)


    4 years, 10 months ago

    Instead of the sitemap names being sitemap_product it is not product-sitemap, etc.

    Why change the names from the standard to something different? I now need to choose to create new redirects for over a 100 sites, rollback to a previous version, or use another sitemap plugin. Sitemaps were working prior to v3.0, but in the last week we have had 6 release that have done nothing but cause issues.

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Michael Torbert

    (@hallsofmontezuma)

    WordPress Virtuoso

    4 years, 10 months ago

    Why change the names from the standard to something different?

    There is no standard, it’s that what we had before no longer works with the latest Google changes. You can read more about it in our release post here.
    https://semperplugins.com/aioseop-3-1-xml-sitemap-changes/

    I now need to choose to create new redirects for over a 100 sites, rollback to a previous version, or use another sitemap plugin.

    You don’t need to do any of those things. Google Search Console will eventually crawl and update on its own. To try and speed up the process, you can remove and re-add your sitemap.xml to GSC. (It does have agressive caching so even then it may not update right away, but usually doesn’t take longer than 20 minutes or so).

    in the last week we have had 6 release that have done nothing but cause issues

    We’ve done a bit more than cause issues. We’ve literally resolved over a hundred of them in the past week.

    Thread Starter 7thcircle

    (@7thcircle)

    4 years, 10 months ago

    Since you have no insight into redirects that I have in place on my site how can you say I don’t need to update the ones I have?

    As for standards, there may not be a “standard”, but there are standard names that all other sitemap developers use and that have been in place for many years. I can speak to this since I remember hand coding sitemaps back in the day. We have always used sitemap as the preface, not the postfix, and the _ has been preferred over the – to represent a space in the name.

    As for issues, I am speaking to the sitemaps, and not any other pieces in this thread. The other issues that I may or may not have had may or not have been resolved, but that is for another thread if there are other issues. I am speaking about sitemaps not generating, being blank, not excluding noindex pages, including posts that are no longer present, invalid urls, etc.

    Removing and re-adding a sitemap from GSC does not work the magic you think, I have done that recently, and I have sites that still show the old sitemap with the compressed version, and failures about reading them.

    Michael Torbert

    (@hallsofmontezuma)

    WordPress Virtuoso

    4 years, 10 months ago

    I’m not sure what else to tell you. There are no standards. I wish there were. If there were we’d use them.
    What we used before we made up somewhat arbitrarily 8 or 9 years ago, although I suppose I should take it as a compliment you think it’s a standard. Unfortunately, Google disagrees, and they no longer supports it in certain instances, forcing us to change. Several of us stayed up until after midnight last night working on an emergency release for this.
    What we’re using now is (nearly) the same that our biggest competitor uses and has for many years, so it’s definitely valid.

    If you have customizations specific to your site, you’re correct that we can’t say you don’t need to update them. Only you can decide that.
    Unfortunately we’re not able to base development decisions of software will millions of users on edge case customizations. We make decisions about what is best for the majority of users.
    Having said that, we have the same philosophy as WordPress Core. “Decisions are made by those who show up.” You’re welcome to participate in development discussions on Github. https://github.com/semperfiwebdesign/all-in-one-seo-pack/

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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