Main-domain festival_wire sitemap 404s (wp-sitemap-posts-festival_wire-N.xml) — stale cross-site index leak

[chubes4]

Summary

https://extrachill.com/wp-sitemap-posts-festival_wire-2.xml returns HTTP 404 (42 hits / 14d in the main-site 404 log). This is a forward/news-reactive Festival Wire SEO surface leaking crawl budget and dropping a sitemap Google still has indexed.

Related to but distinct from #2 (which is about festival-wire canonical URL indexing). This issue is specifically the sitemap sub-file 404 on the main domain.

Verified root cause

The festival_wire post type does not exist on the main site (blog 1) — it is registered by extrachill-news-wire, which is per-site activated only on the WIRE subsite (blog 11, wire.extrachill.com).

Confirmed:

• wp plugin list --status=active on blog 1 → no extrachill-news-wire.
• wp plugin list --status=active --url=wire.extrachill.com → extrachill-news-wire active.
• extrachill-news-wire/includes/festival-wire-post-type.php registers the CPT on init — only where the plugin loads (blog 11).
• SELECT COUNT(*) FROM c8c_posts WHERE post_type='festival_wire' (blog 1) = 0; c8c_11_posts has 3,935 published festival_wire posts.

Live checks:

URL	Status
https://extrachill.com/wp-sitemap.xml	200
https://extrachill.com/wp-sitemap-posts-festival_wire-1.xml	404
https://extrachill.com/wp-sitemap-posts-festival_wire-2.xml	404
https://wire.extrachill.com/wp-sitemap.xml	200
https://wire.extrachill.com/wp-sitemap-posts-festival_wire-1.xml	200
https://wire.extrachill.com/wp-sitemap-posts-festival_wire-2.xml	200

So both main-domain festival_wire sitemap pages 404 (not just page 2) — because the CPT simply doesn't exist on blog 1. Google retains these main-domain sitemap URLs from a previous era when festival_wire content lived on / was sitemapped from the main domain (the same legacy that issue #2 and extrachill-multisite/inc/core/legacy-path-redirects.php already address for /festival-wire/* content paths).

Existing partial mitigation (content paths only)

extrachill-multisite/inc/core/legacy-path-redirects.php already 301s legacy /festival-wire/* content paths to wire (with slug validation against blog 11). It does NOT cover the wp-sitemap-posts-festival_wire-*.xml URLs — those fall through to a 404 because the template_redirect regex only matches ^/festival-wire(/|$).

Recommended fix (pick one — preference order)

1. Preferred: 301 the stale main-domain festival_wire sitemap URLs to their wire equivalents. Add a redirect for ^/wp-sitemap-posts-festival_wire-(\d+)\.xml$ → https://wire.extrachill.com/wp-sitemap-posts-festival_wire-$1.xml. This preserves whatever residual sitemap authority Google still associates with the main domain and points the crawler at the live sitemap. Cleanest home is the existing legacy-path-redirects handler in extrachill-multisite (extend the regex), OR an extrachill seo redirects add rule if regex redirects are supported there. Verify page-N mapping is 1:1 (wire currently has festival_wire pages 1 and 2, matching what the main domain is asked for).
2. Alternative: let it 404 and rely on de-indexing. Since the CPT genuinely doesn't exist on main, a 404 is technically "correct" and Google will eventually drop the URLs. Lower effort, but wastes the 42 hits/14d of residual crawl interest and provides no forwarding signal.
3. Not recommended: register a cross-site festival_wire sitemap on the main domain. extrachill-seo already ships a custom sitemap provider (EC_Sitemaps_Custom_Provider, extrachill_seo_sitemap_urls filter) — but synthesizing 3,935 cross-site wire URLs into the main sitemap duplicates canonical content across domains and would worsen the canonical-indexing problem tracked in Investigate festival-wire posts canonical URL indexing issue #2. Avoid.

Suggested next step

Implement option 1 as a redirect (regex) in extrachill-multisite's legacy-path-redirects handler, mirroring the existing /festival-wire/* slug-forwarding logic. Confirm the wire sitemap page count stays in sync (if wire grows to page 3+, the redirect should pass $1 through generically, which it does).

cc #2 (festival-wire canonical indexing — same legacy root, different symptom).

---

Filed by Extra Chill Bot from a 14-day main-site 404 audit. No code changed; production not touched.