...we were on 2.2.x for a LONG time until our host needed to upgrade PHP this past December. Therefore, we had CSCart support do the upgrade for us to the latest 4.7.1SP2 release. Everything worked out well, extremely happy with their help, and it saved me a ton of time.
I am still tweaking/learning everything, and I see that 1) I have lost my old robots.txt file (which probably wouldn't be applicable anyway), and 2) I am getting the usual "sitemap is html" error from Google. Doing as much looking as I can, I don't see clear answers here, and I am not fluent in Russian. So :
- what would be a good starting point for a robots.txt file?
- what can be done about the sitemap issue (have SEO and sitemap add-ons turned on)
...we were on 2.2.x for a LONG time until our host needed to upgrade PHP this past December. Therefore, we had CSCart support do the upgrade for us to the latest 4.7.1SP2 release. Everything worked out well, extremely happy with their help, and it saved me a ton of time.
I am still tweaking/learning everything, and I see that 1) I have lost my old robots.txt file (which probably wouldn't be applicable anyway), and 2) I am getting the usual "sitemap is html" error from Google. Doing as much looking as I can, I don't see clear answers here, and I am not fluent in Russian. So :
- what would be a good starting point for a robots.txt file?
- what can be done about the sitemap issue (have SEO and sitemap add-ons turned on)
Robots - yes, I am aware of how to construct a robots file, but wondering what the recommendations are for what folders/files to disallow. My previous robots (wherever that went) had lines that likely pertained to outdated 2.2.x folders/file, and would not be applicable to 4.7.1 anyway. ?
Sitemap - yes, have sitemap going, and have SEO enabled as mentioned. But, Google webmaster still gives me the error. According to the forum post you linked, with SEO enabled, I shouldn't have to edit htaccess (nor do I want to).
One last plea for the sitemap issue (haven't figured out the robots but I will).
Still getting a warning in Google's console about the sitemap appearing to be an html page. SEO add-on is enabled and working. Link/url to my sitemap.xml file loads properly on my end within a browser. Mostly stock CSCart installation which is why I assume someone else has had this issue, but see nothing in the forums (in english).
Weird bug in my (recent) upgrade/installation, or something simple I am missing? Thanks again for any help.
Hmm. I have always had https://www.domain.comlisted for the property in Google's tools, but should I have (instead or in addition to) a property for https://domain.com? I don't think that should matter.
Possibly related now that I look at site settings in Google, I see the preferred domain setting is set for no "www", and I have always had no preferred domain. I try to change it to no preferred domain, but it doesn't save. Not sure if this is related, or why I cannot change. ?
Odd, but it seems CSCart may be working fine, as I assumed, and it is my settings in Google causing an issue... ?
Ok, so I now have in my Google console the following 4 properties (whether I need them or not), resubmitted sitemap.xml in all of them, and what the sitemap status is :
(After these 4 were in place, I was also able to save the "no preferred domain" site settings in each. Again, no idea what that will do.)
So, at least I know my CS installation is not causing anything, at least I don't think. I will call them off. And thank you for pointing me in the right direction of loading different URL's for the sitemaps to test, must have missed that the first 50 times I tried.
Now, just not sure what properties above I really need to maintain in Google console. ?
Small update but no real progress. I received a "stock" htaccess file from CS support, but it's quite a bit different than the one I currently have, and our store is working fine other than this sitemap issue, so not sure I want to mess with it.
Tool - thank you. config.local has "domain.com" (no www), so not sure what that gets me or if that's correct. Again, almost sure that is what I have always had.
Bottom line is that the url domain.com/sitemap.xml loads fine, but www.domain.com/sitemap.xml loads our home page. And maybe it's no big deal and won't make any difference with Google or SEO, I'm no expert there.
Thanks everyone for the feedback and help, if I come to any other conclusions as to what we're doing wrong, I'll reply back.
Bottom line is that the url domain.com/sitemap.xml loads fine, but www.domain.com/sitemap.xml loads our home page. And maybe it's no big deal and won't make any difference with Google or SEO, I'm no expert there.
Did you try to contact hosting administrator with this issue?