This plugin redirects the sitemap to the front page.

Hi @nixiemartyn, this may mean there is a problem with your sitemap file as WordPress thinks it does not exist. If you’d like me to take a close look you’re welcome to email more info to support[at]pipdig.zendesk.com. Even though the issue isn’t with this plugin, it may be that there is a simple solution with the sitemap settings.

Hi pipdig

I am using The SEO Framework plugin, which is preconfigured. The sitemap location is also added to robots.txt automatically.

It is possible that using an SEO plugin will confuse WordPress core, but how about whitelisting the URL for the sitemap in your code? The sitemap is such an important feature that whitelisting the URLs really does make practical sense. Most SEO plugins with millions of installations, like Yoast, XML sitemap, and SEO Framework use the same location:

/sitemap.xml
/sitemap_index.xml
Whereas /wp-sitemap.xml is a WordPress standard

If I turn off your plugin Google Search Console can find the sitemaps just fine, but activating your plugin will redirect to front page?and the sitemap will be unavailable. This issue happened on two sites using The SEO Framework and Redirect 404 to Homepage. The plugin’s sitemap settings are set to default, which is what most users will use.?

Thanks

Functionality like this plugin offers should run at template_redirect, at priority 11 or higher, preferably PHP_INT_MAX. The reason is that the template might not be fully determined before that point, so you may not be dealing with a 404 page before that.

Not all templates are (or should be) registered via WordPress’s template-loader; in our case, you can blame Yoast for that.

Custom templates like The SEO Framework’s sitemap run exit before other template loaders initialize, so the redirect shouldn’t occur if the constricts detailed in my first paragraph are honored. The same is true for WordPress’s built-in sitemap (which Yoast’s rules also broke), and which also loads at template_redirect.

When the redirect takes place at template_redirect, you may even be able to delete the Cron/XMLRPC/AJAX and bbPress defence clauses, making for a super-lightweight plugin. I cannot fathom an issue that’d spawn migrating the callback from wp at 10 to template_direct at PHP_INT_MAX.

@nixiemartyn if you care about SEO, please read https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2011/05/do-404s-hurt-my-site. Particularly, the ‘Q: Tell me more about “soft 404 errors.”‘ part:

[An example is when] a site redirects any unknown URLs to their home page instead of returning 404 errors. [This] can have negative effects on our understanding and indexing of your site, so we recommend making sure your server returns the proper response codes for nonexistent content.

404’s are a natural part of any website, and redirecting users from it may lead to a confusing experience. Users understand 404: “Ah, the content is gone/not found, let’s move back or click onward.” — With a forced redirect from any URL, you’re serving the user content they didn’t necessarily anticipate. This can harm the user experience.

Still, that doesn’t take away the necessity for this plugin, such as on bespoke one-pagers or sites relying on page caching that run on ancient hardware.

@cybr – Thanks for chiming in with this, that’s very helpful.

@nixiemartyn – Based on this, we should be able to fix the issue with an update. That will be ready either today/tomorrow. I’ll let you know when it is available if you’d like to give it a try.

@nixiemartyn – this is now ready. All you need to do is uninstall then re-install the ‘Redirect 404 to Homepage’ plugin and you’ll get those new changes immediately. I’ve tested with SEO Framework and it is working for me.

Thank you Sybre for the impressive technical input and I’ll make sure to read your link.

And thank you Pipdig for fixing the issue so urgently.