https:\/\/httpstatus.io<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nLook for:<\/p>\n
Content-Type<\/span>: text<\/span>\/html \u274c (Incorrect)
\nContent-Type<\/span>: application\/xml<\/span> \u2705 (Correct)
\n<\/code><\/p>\n
\n<\/span>3: Check Web Server Configuration<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\nDepending on your stack (Apache, NGINX, PHP, or CMS), here\u2019s how to fix it.<\/p>\n
<\/span>For WordPress (Common Case)<\/span><\/h4>\n\n- \n
Check Your Sitemap Plugin<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n- \n
\n- If using Yoast SEO<\/strong>, Rank Math<\/strong>, or All in One SEO<\/strong>, these plugins generate XML sitemaps.<\/li>\n
- Sometimes, caching plugins (like WP Rocket) interfere and serve cached HTML versions.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\n- <\/li>\n
- \n
Clear Cache<\/strong><\/p>\n\n- \n
Clear your page and server cache.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
- \n
Disable caching for sitemap URLs.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
- \n
Force XML Headers via functions.php<\/code><\/strong>
\nAdd this to your theme\u2019s functions.php<\/code>:<\/p>\n\n
add_action<\/span>('init'<\/span>, function () {
\nif<\/span> (strpos<\/span>($_SERVER<\/span>['REQUEST_URI'<\/span>], 'sitemap'<\/span>) !== false<\/span>) {
\nheader<\/span>('Content-Type: application\/xml'<\/span>);
\n}
\n});
\n<\/code><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n- \n
Disable Pretty Permalinks Temporarily<\/strong>
\nIf your permalinks are broken, WordPress may route to a 404 page (HTML) instead of your XML sitemap.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/span>For Apache (via .htaccess<\/code>)<\/span><\/h4>\nAdd this to your .htaccess<\/code> file:<\/p>\n\n
<FilesMatch \"\\.xml$\">
\nForceType application\/xml
\nHeader set Content-Type \"application\/xml\"
\n<\/FilesMatch>
\n<\/code><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n<\/span>For NGINX<\/span><\/h4>\nIn your server config:<\/p>\n
\n
location<\/span> ~ \\.xml$<\/span> {
\ndefault_type<\/span> application\/xml;
\n}
\n<\/code><\/div>\n<\/div>\nThen reload NGINX:<\/p>\n
\n
sudo systemctl reload nginx
\n<\/code><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n<\/span>For Static Sitemaps<\/span><\/h4>\nIf you manually created a static sitemap.xml<\/code>, make sure your server isn\u2019t treating it like HTML.<\/p>\n\n- \n
Open the .xml<\/code> file and ensure it starts with:<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n
<?xml version=\"1.0\"<\/span><\/span> encoding=\"UTF-8\"<\/span>?>
\n<urlset<\/span><\/span> ...<\/span>>
\n<\/code><\/div>\n<\/div>\n