Quote Originally Posted by rlexyd View Post
Had to change all the permissions for the generated .xml and .htaccess files associated with the Sitemap plugin to 755 as that seems to be the only way Google can fetch them all?!
understanding linux permissions/security can be a bit of work. but it is wrong to say that this is the only way to do something.

why the permissions on your .htaccess file need to be changed, well that's probably not true. if you can go to:

www.yoursite.com/.htaccess

and you see your .htaccess file on your browser window, i would suggest to you that is a problem; and not how one would want their webserver configured.

and your sitemap program is NOT generating your .htaccess. if it is, there is something wrong with this picture.

if you can go to:

www.mysite.com/sitemapcategories.xml (or whatever your sitemap is called)

and you can see that xml file in your browser window, then so can google.

having to manually change your sitemap permissions every time you regenerate your sitemap is far from ideal, and something that i would bring up with your hosting company.

understanding the owner of the file, the group of the file, and which user is running apache (or whatever is serving up your web pages), is a starting point for being able to add a crontab entry for your sitemap, generating new sitemaps on a scheduled basis (based on how often your product mix changes/goes out of stock, etc.), and having those sitemaps be available to whatever spider wants to look at them, without the need to change permissions every time the crontab runs.

why they would need to be more than 644 is more about the setup than anything else.