Session Objective
Fix https://aguiarinjurylawyers.com/sitemap/ so it is either a working sitemap or a redirect to the canonical sitemap.
What Was Done
- Verified the live issue: /sitemap/ returned 200 text/html while /sitemap_index.xml and sub-sitemaps returned valid XML.
- Confirmed live WordPress path: /home/1615235.cloudwaysapps.com/fctbkwwahp/public_html on Cloudways Flexible.
- Verified RankMath sitemap modules are enabled and rewrite rules include sitemap routes.
- Found published WordPress page 22658 with slug sitemap was owning /sitemap/.
- Added RankMath redirect row 637 for sitemap/?$ to https://aguiarinjurylawyers.com/sitemap_index.xml.
- Updated old RankMath redirect row 212 for html-sitemap to point directly to https://aguiarinjurylawyers.com/sitemap_index.xml, avoiding a chain.
- Set page 22658 from publish to draft so the redirect can own /sitemap/.
- Purged WordPress object cache, Cloudflare targeted URLs, and Cloudways app cache.
Important Recovery Notes
- A short .htaccess redirect was attempted, caused 403 responses on sitemap XML routes, and was immediately rolled back.
- Restored .htaccess from /home/1615235.cloudwaysapps.com/fctbkwwahp/public_html/.htaccess.bak-sitemap-redirect-20260610-152116.
- Fixed .htaccess permissions back to 644 after rollback.
- Failed .htaccess copy retained as .htaccess.failed-sitemap-rule-20260610-152146 for forensics.
- Sitemap page backup retained on server at /tmp/wp-page-22658-sitemap-before-draft-20260610-152345.json.
- RankMath sitemap redirections backup retained on server at /tmp/rankmath-sitemap-redirections-20260610-151859.tsv.
Verification