Major Bug -> PR0

Hi,

I just noticed that two of my forums, both running vBSEO and vBSEO Google/Yahoo Sitemap plugins got slapped with a PR0.

Very confused, I think I discovered a possible answer.

Apparantly, on all 4 of my forums where I have vBSEO running and the vBSEO Google/Yahoo sitemaps, the URL /sitemap_index.xml.gz on each of the sites returns the error:

Warning: fopen(/home/sitepath/public_html/vbseo_sitemap/data/downloads.dat) [function.fopen]: failed to open stream: Permission denied in /home/sitepath/public_html/vbseo_sitemap/vbseo_getsitemap.php on line 48

Warning: fwrite(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in /home/sitepath/public_html/vbseo_sitemap/vbseo_getsitemap.php on line 49

Warning: fclose(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in /home/sitepath/public_html/vbseo_sitemap/vbseo_getsitemap.php on line 50
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About 6 weeks ago I switched servers, which have updated PHP/Perl/Apache, etc., so that might be the reason why.. but can you help narrow down the problem as why it's doing this and how to fix it?

Google Sitemaps is, as you might expect, showing errors downloading the sitemaps on each of the four forums.

Also, do you think this could be a likely reason why I was slapped with PR0 on two of my forums? (The other two broken sitemap forums didn't get PR0). vBSEO appears to be working on all four of the forums, just not sitemaps.

Hello Tyler ,

Make sure your vbseo_sitemap/data folder is set to chmod 777 and files inside that folder are set to chmod 666

Hi Mert,

I did this and am still having the same problem.

I do not believe that the problem is related to anything such as file permissions, since I had set up vBSEO sitemap over a year ago and it was running fine. My assumption is that it stopped working once I switched servers. The data was restored from a server backup, so it did not need to be reinstalled or anything.

That is why I'm thinking it may have to do with a certain server setup or option that might be causing this. Can you think of anything in regards to PHP or Apache needing to be compiled with anything?

Thanks in advance...

sounds like a chown, not a chmod problem.

your old server chown's the data folder.

rename data to /dataold
make a new data folder and 777 it up.

as for page rank,

A) its useless
B) it's determined by links in, not your sitemap
C) i've been a 0 for over a year now, and my traffic keeps going up

Hi Guys,

It turned out, as I suspected, to be a server modification issue. My server administration team was able to solve the issue. The solution, in case a similar problem happens to others, is we removed the mod_security block on include() and it is now functioning properly.

Brian - I certainly agree that PR is meaningless... unfortunately not all advertisers agree. It is funny though... I'm very high on the SERPS and have a fair bit of traffic on some of my sites, but have a very low PR. Useless indeed.

Corrupt sitemap doesn't effect the PR, look for other possible causes.