Google webmaster tools says I'm having sitemap errors

I logged into my Google Webmaster Tools and I'm having some Sitemap errors.

My sitemap stats:
Total URLs: 1401293
Indexed URLs: 254133

The Sitemap Index has a red error word and when I click details, there are hundreds and hundreds of error messages, all saying:

Too many Sitemaps
Your index file contains too many Sitemaps. Please create multiple index files with up to 1000 Sitemaps each and submit all index files.

Google's help, regarding this error message, says:

The list of Sitemaps in your Sitemap index exceeds the maximum allowed. A Sitemap index can contain no more than 1,000 Sitemaps. Split your Sitemap index into multiple Sitemap index files and ensure that each contains no more than 1,000 Sitemaps. Then, resubmit your Sitemap index files individually.

How do I fix this?

I see a sitemap_1008 and on higher so there are a lot of sitemap files!

Running the latest vbseo and sitemap generator.

Originally Posted by Oleg Ignatiuk

Hello,

what is your "Number of URLs per sitemap" setting in vBSEO Sitemap Generator options?

Max URLs in Sitemap Files is set at 20,000

there were 2802 sitemap files, I deleted all of them. Do I need to delete the log files too?

I just set Include Show Post Pages to No.

What else should I do?

Originally Posted by Mert Gökçeimam

You may also consider to change the following setting : Enable "Permalink" indicators in Postbits to Replace post number link with Permalink
Will replace individual showpost links with the "Permalink" link. Note: Posts will no longer be accessible individually.

You can also delete the log files.

OK - I made that change, I have no idea exactly what that does. Can you explain or send me a link or two to read over. Please.

I have a massive amount of traffic/content happening - is it worthwhile to run the sitemap twice a day? I feel like we need to run it twice a day, but how do I get Google to read the sitemaps faster? But on the other side of things, traffic is heavy all times of day so having the scheduled task run at 4am is the best solution to not add additional server load when peak times are high. Thoughts?

have a read through my sig link 'ultimate guide'

I just checked my Google Webmaster Tools and the same error is happening:

Too many Sitemaps
Your index file contains too many Sitemaps. Please create multiple index files with up to 1000 Sitemaps each and submit all index files.

How can I get this resolved??

Originally Posted by Oleg Ignatiuk

What is your sitemap URL?

www.pnwriders.com/sitemap_index.xml.gz

From within that directory, I deleted all the log files and all the *.gz files, then went back into my forum and ran the sceduled task to generate the sitemap:

Code:

 
vBSEO Sitemap Generator 
[SECTION START] tags [12,651.4Kb mem used] [4,697,189s (+4,697,189s)]
[create sitemap file] filename: sitemap_2810.xml.gz, number of urls: 539 [12,732.0Kb mem used] [4,697,190s (+1s)]
[create sitemap in text format] part #2811 [12,732.0Kb mem used] [4,697,190s (+0s)]
[create sitemap index] filename: sitemap_index.xml.gz, number of sitemaps: 2810 [15,625.2Kb mem used] [4,697,190s (+0s)]
Sitemap has been created. [14,631.1Kb mem used] [4,697,192s (+2s)]
 
Done

It created the new files in my data folder. Looking at the output, why did it only create 539 URL's?

And the only .gz files showing in my data directory is:

sitemap_2810.xml.gz
sitemap_index.xml.gz
urllist.txt.gz

How do I get all my sitemaps back in there? That could be why you're getting a 404 error looking for sitemap 1.