Virtual Robots.txt

I had an issue that I believed was being caused by the plugin but the plugin author was very quick to help and clear up the issue. Great and helpful customer service – thanks!

Simple and easy. Works perfectly.

Works great and easy to use and customise. It already set by default the directories that need to be left out of Search Engines scanning/indexing… Very happy with it!

What I saw wasn’t what I got. The XML sitemap wasn’t included in the robots.txt file, even thought this was described as a feature that should work out of the box. In addition to that, upon installing this plugin, it blocked certain directories without asking. Lastly, it inserts a line at the top of the file, promoting the plugin. That should be an optional feature that users are empowered to turn off. All in all, it offers the functionality, but falls short and disappoints in other areas.

It was good

I thought this would be simple. Sure sounds simple. But after I saved your suggested text to my brand new “virtual robots.txt”, I clicked the link where it says “You can preview your robots.txt file here (opens a new window). If your robots.txt file doesn’t match what is shown below, you may have a physical file that is being displayed instead.” That new window shows text that is indeed different from the plugin’s. So I understand that to mean there’s a physical robots.txt file on my server. So which one is actually going to be used? Your FAQ offers this: Q: Will it conflict with any existing robots.txt file? A: If a physical robots.txt file exists on your site, WordPress won’t process any request for one, so there will be no conflict. If a physical file exists, WP won’t process ANY request for one? This SOUNDS like WP will ignore BOTH the physical file AND your virtual one. In which case, what’s the point? Might as well not have one, it seems to me. When I manually go to mydomain.com/robots.txt, I see what’s in the physical file, not what the plugin saved. So… is it working? I don’t know! Should I delete the physical file and assume the virtual one will work? I don’t know! Should I delete this plugin and edit the physical file manually? Most likely. 2 stars instead of 1 because I appreciate getting the suggested lines to include in my file.