I discovered that my sitemaps not longer worked on 1.4.0.2, just upgraded to 1.4.0.3 [6817] (Official Build)and get the same error. No information in the debug log.

The only message is in the browser.

XML Parsing Error: no element found
Location: http://gallery.soft-focus-imagining.com/index.php?sitemap
Line Number 37719, Column 1:

There is a good chance that the processing time required to create the site map is greater than your server allows. There was some discussion on this on the forum earlier. I do not know if the user came up with a work-a-round or not. There has been a ticket created to deal with this, but no implementation so far.

You pointed me in the correct direct. I did try to find an answer first! Thank You.

For others if you run into this; in php.ini change

max_execution_time = xx (I made mine 60 (seconds))

I don't like having it set this high but it does work and generates the sitemap.

Sorry, changes to the sitemap are on the list but probably won't happen before 1.4.1 at all. Also try to disable the Google extension option in case you have that set as that adds up as well.

No reason to be sorry .. As 'Red Green' states, "We are all in this together!" (and you guys do an incredible job).

I do have a follow up question though. I was able to spend some time really looking into sitemaps and I need some advice.

I noticed that Google was reporting errors and discovered in the XML file that the image URL being reported was as follows :

<image:loc>
http://gallery.soft-focus-imagining.com/zp-core/i.php?a=Colorado%20Modeling%20Network/Retro%2070s/Arlet&i=CMN+-+70s+Retro+Shoot-Colorado-139.jpg&s=1000&cw=&ch=&q=95&wmk=!
</image:loc>

The problem is the zp-core/i.php part. Typically you would want \zp-core\ in the robots.txt file as a disallow and this throws google off and reports the image as an error.

URL restricted by robots.txt

Is there a way around this?

Nigel.

What you see there is the link to the image processor that happens when an size image has not already been cached. So I can only think of deleting the cached sitemap file after one access and then generating it again. Since this is the way Zenphoto works there is no way around otherwise.

I had no idea that pre-caching was so important in the generation of sitemaps! Thank you for that tip.

Now I've run into an issue I've never seen before with google sitemaps. I can generate them locally with no issues and they display correctly in Firefox but when I submit them to google I get the following message

Line Status Details
Errors 3 Sitemap is HTML Your Sitemap appears to be an HTML page. Please use a supported sitemap format instead.

and no matter what I have tried this is all I get.

Ironically (and a bit of a saving grace) if I save the locally generated sitemap, place sitemap.xml file in the web site and hook up to that it works perfectly.

Except for increasing the process time that's the only php change I have made and this was all working when using the plugin version. Though I don't think it's same plugin that you based your "supported" version on.

Take care,

Nigel.

I had no idea that pre-caching was so important in the generation of sitemaps! Thank you for that tip.

Note that normal precaching is a mixed beast and normally not necessary for the site. See the troubleshooting about it if you haven't already.

It is completly useless if your theme uses custom sizes programmed in the theme directly. The precaching will only cache images based on standard values that in this case would not be used at all. You would only waste space actually.

Regarding validation: Last tests a contributor, who actually helped with that Google extras, and I did when the last major changes where added (before 1.4.) the generated sitemap was completly valid (even with that i.php links above). Make sure all is indeed in UTF8 mode as we do our tests always with that encoding.

I am using UTF8 mode and that's all set in the config as well.

I was caught out by sizes early on in my Zen Photo experience, so I made sure that sizes in the theme matched the sizes specified in Zen's config.

I have a horrible suspicion that the Google issue is actually more a time out issue than anything else. I think Google is expecting data almost immediately but it's actually about 35 to 40 seconds before anything is sent, working on how the browser responds.

I created a non-existing sitemap called not_exist.xml

within 5 seconds it came back with exactly the same error about it being html. And when I submit sitemap.php in about the same time 5 or 6 seconds, it comes back with the red cross.

Nigel.

Time out might be if you have quite a lot of images. Generally the sitemap works so that it is generated when called and no cached sitemap file is found. So it is generally wise to call that manually so there is a static cached file.