Sitemap Plugin: Google ping: FAILED.

Any idea why I would get this every time?

Weird, perhaps you could try again later to make sure it isnt a Google issue. I have pinged a couple of hours ago and it worked fine for me, are you given anymore information as to reason for the ping failure?

Any idea why I would get this every time?

Please check your "allow_url_fopen" setting in phpinfo. We will implement another way of google ping, but currently it works with "allow_url_fopen on" only.

Yes, I have that set in the .htaccess in my root, but not in the .htaccess in my VB root (as supplied by vbSEO). I assume I need to add it there too?

Hmm. The settings I have in my root .htaccess seem to be carrying over to directories under my forums folder for some things.

Example, in my root .htaccess I have:
php_value allow_call_time_pass_reference 1

If I remove that, I get errors when trying to go to /forums/vbseo_sitemap

I also have this in my root .htaccess:
php_value allow_url_fopen 1

Shouldn't that one carry over as well?

The ini settings defined in .htaccess should be applied for *deeper* directories as well.

You can create a small php file with a phpinfo() call in vbseo_sitemap/ to see the exact settings for this folder.

Strange. I put a .htaccess IN the vbseo_sitemap directory with that setting and it still failed. phpinfo still showed that value off in that location too.

So, I'll just make the changes directly to php.ini and will try again.

Good idea, your php config may not allow changing this setting in .htaccess. Let me know how it goes.

Well, the one in the root allows vBulletin's Upload From URL to work fine.... No big deal, I'll wait if you have plans to use another method for pinging Google. (My host prefers not to edit the PHP.INI and instead suggested using the .htaccess instead.)

Ok, we've implemented an alternative way to ping google. It should work with allow_url_"fopen off" now

Ping Successful with 1.1. Thanks