[Pro] Sitemapper submitting to Google

When I use Sitemapper it creates two versions of the sitemap.xml and url list.txt files; one with my other documents, and one in a subfolder. I wasn’t sure which of these to upload (I upload manually); currently I’m trying both. Not sure if that is the problem, but when I try to submit it, it comes up straight away saying it is submitted to Bing, but with Google it just gives the spiralling status message. Google definitely has the wrong version of my site mapped; most of the links it shows up on a search give a 404 message. Can you please advise? Thank you.


actionsdev mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:

Could you please post links to the files and folders? When you use the Google Webmaster Tools interface to submit your sitemap, you will have to enter a complete URL to the sitemap.xml file there. It would be helpful if you could include in your reply an example of a page that appears on the map and yet does not exist in your site.

One thing that occurs to me here is that Freeway can, in general, get confused about files created by Actions. The symptoms of this include a lot of duplicate files, suffixed with -1, -3, etc. The cause of this is Freeway losing track of its own files (in its internal database) and then being conservative about overwriting any existing files on your Mac. (This is a nice thing, honestly.)

A quick way to test this assertion is to locate your local Site Folder on your Mac, and completely delete all contents within it. Then publish your site again. All files and folders will be re-generated automatically. See if you have the same problem in the Site Folder after the publish completes. If you don’t, then clear out your site’s home folder on your server and upload again. This should clear up the problem for you.

Make sure you have a backup before you delete files from your server, though. Any good SFTP application like Transmit or CyberDuck should be able to duplicate a folder in place on your server, and if all goes sideways, you can then delete the original and rename the copy and be back in business.

Walter

PS: Definitely use the built-in SFTP to upload to your server. Freeway tracks which files are “dirty” compared with the server, so you can be assured that everything that has changed will be updated on the server. Transmit can do this as well with its Synch service, but it is working at one remove from the truth. Freeway knows – with absolute certainty – which files it has modified.


actionsdev mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:

I came across this discussion a few days ago, which prompted me to check my own sitemap, since I too use the SiteMapper action. Sure enough, I get a 404 in my Robots.txt file because I have the following line hard coded in there:

Sitemap: https://mydomain.com/sitemap.xml

I then opened my FTP client Transmit and did a keyword search for “site” in the root directory. Either Sitemapper or Freeway renamed it “sitemap2.xml”!!!

I manually renamed that XML file on my server back to “sitemap.xml”. And I deleted the sitemap2 file from my site folder. Sadly, when I made a change to my site, Published, and uploaded again today, the filename was back to “sitemap2.xml” again!

Walter, is there a way we can keep that important file from being renamed? Obviously, Sitemapper is there to rebuild the content of sitemap.xml when I re-Publish my site. And I of course use Freeway to upload via FTP. I am well aware Freeway renames files, and normally that’s not a big problem, but in this case it is. The sitemap file should never be renamed by Freeway.

Thanks,

James W.


actionsdev mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:

In your Site Folder, on your Mac, you probably have a sitemap.xml and a sitemap2.xml. At some point, Freeway “forgot” that it created the first of these, and so made the second. This is a powerful feature of Freeway, but it doesn’t look like one from this point of view. The solution is to delete both of these files from your Mac, run the Publish command again, and then upload from within Freeway. That should clear out the sitemap2.xml and restore the correct sitemap.xml file to your server.

I could go on about how this feature keeps Freeway from overwriting files it didn’t create, which makes it possible to coordinate the use of Freeway with other applications while making a really complex site, but I know you’ll say “but this is wrong”, and I do agree – an Action should not get this treatment.

Walter

On Oct 2, 2018, at 2:19 AM, JDW email@hidden wrote:

I came across this discussion a few days ago, which prompted me to check my own sitemap, since I too use the SiteMapper action. Sure enough, I get a 404 in my Robots.txt file because I have the following line hard coded in there:

Sitemap: https://mydomain.com/sitemap.xml

I then opened my FTP client Transmit and did a keyword search for “site” in the root directory. Either Sitemapper or Freeway renamed it “sitemap2.xml”!!!

I manually renamed that XML file on my server back to “sitemap.xml”. And I deleted the sitemap2 file from my site folder. Sadly, when I made a change to my site, Published, and uploaded again today, the filename was back to “sitemap2.xml” again!

Walter, is there a way we can keep that important file from being renamed? Obviously, Sitemapper is there to rebuild the content of sitemap.xml when I re-Publish my site. And I of course use Freeway to upload via FTP. I am well aware Freeway renames files, and normally that’s not a big problem, but in this case it is. The sitemap file should never be renamed by Freeway.

Thanks,

James W.


actionsdev mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
Information for existing FreewayTalk / Groups.io users - Site Feedback - Softpress Talk


actionsdev mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
https://freewaytalk.softpress.com/person/options

Walter,

Thank you for your reply.

As mentioned in my previous post, I did delete all instances of that XML file from my site folder, but somehow Freeway decided to bring back the filename with the number 2 in it.

I’ve used Freeway long enough to know how it does renaming and why. I am just curious if we could HACK Freeway to NEVER under any circumstances change a particular filename. Sitefolder XML files should be granted that special status.

Thanks,

James W.


actionsdev mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:

The only thing I can think of that you could do would be to create a symlink on the server from sitemap.xml to sitemap[n].xml*. You could also change the filename in your robots.txt file. There is nothing magical about it being named sitemap.xml, unless you don’t also tell the spiders where to look (which you are doing by listing it in the robots.txt).

Freeway’s renaming happens on your Mac, and there’s no way to convince it (once it has made up its mind this way) to rename a generated file, except to delete EVERYTHING in your site folder and re-publish, or create a new site folder using the File / Document Setup output tab and re-publish. The Actions API does not expose any controls over what a file will be named, only what you suggest to Freeway that it be named. Like everything else that Freeway generates, what it will be is whatever Freeway’s algorithms decide it will be. Preferences, Inspector settings, design intent – they are all just suggestions to the AI.

Walter

*If you want to do this, shell into your server with SSH, then…

cd path/to/your/site/root
ln -s sitemap2.xml sitemap.xml

On Oct 2, 2018, at 8:18 PM, JDW email@hidden wrote:

Walter,

Thank you for your reply.

As mentioned in my previous post, I did delete all instances of that XML file from my site folder, but somehow Freeway decided to bring back the filename with the number 2 in it.

I’ve used Freeway long enough to know how it does renaming and why. I am just curious if we could HACK Freeway to NEVER under any circumstances change a particular filename. Sitefolder XML files should be granted that special status.

Thanks,

James W.


actionsdev mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
Information for existing FreewayTalk / Groups.io users - Site Feedback - Softpress Talk


actionsdev mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
https://freewaytalk.softpress.com/person/options

My web space provider doesn’t allow me to SSH into the server. I suppose there is a way I could accomplish it with .htaccess, but I will have to investigate that. I would need to consider more than just “sitemap2.xml” though since Freeway will no doubt generate “sitemap3.xml” at some point, for the same unexplainable reasoning it generates a “sitemap2” when “sitemap” doesn’t even exist!

Thanks,

James W.


actionsdev mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:

Here’s another idea you could try. I used a sitemap generator on a large Ruby on Rails site, and the result was a set of individual sitemap files, with an “index” file to point the way to each of them.

You could make a file named sitemap.xml with a link to your sitemap[n].xml inside it, like this:

Upload that file to the root of your site, and make sure that the absolute URL is correct, and your map will be found – until Freeway decides to change the filename again, that is.

Walter


actionsdev mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:

Thank you for the helpful tips and code, Walter!

Sincerely,

James W.


actionsdev mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at: