AIOSEO Documentation

Documentation, Reference Materials, and Tutorials for AIOSEO

Robots.txt Editor for Multisite Networks

If you have a WordPress Multisite Network, you can manage global robots.txt rules that will be applied to all sites in the network.

To get started, go to the Network Admin and then click on All in One SEO in the left hand menu.

You will see our standard Robots.txt Editor where you can enable and manage custom rules for your robots.txt.

Click on the Enable Custom Robots.txt toggle to enable the rule editor.

You should see the Robots.txt Preview section at the bottom of the screen which shows the default rules added by WordPress.

Default Robots.txt Rules in WordPress

The default rules that show in the Robots.txt Preview section (shown in screenshot above) ask robots not to crawl your core WordPress files. It’s unnecessary for search engines to access these files directly because they don’t contain any relevant site content.

If for some reason you want to remove the default rules that are added by WordPress then you’ll need to use the robots_txt filter hook in WordPress.

Adding Rules Using the Rule Builder

The rule builder is used to add your own custom rules for specific paths on your site.

For example, if you would like to add a rule to block all robots from a temp directory then you can use the rule builder to add this.

To add a rule, enter the user agent in the User Agent field. Using * will apply the rule to all user agents.

Next, select either Allow or Disallow to allow or block the user agent.

Next, enter the directory path or filename in the Directory Path field.

Finally, click the Save Changes button.

If you want to add more rules, then click the Add Rule button and repeat the steps above and click the Save Changes button.

Your rules will appear in the Robots.txt Preview section and in your robots.txt which you can view by clicking the Open Robots.txt button.

Any rule you add here will apply to all sites in your network and cannot be overridden at the individual site level.

Editing Rules Using the Rule Builder

To edit any rule you’ve added, just change the details in the rule builder and click the Save Changes button.

Deleting a Rule in the Rule Builder

To delete a rule you’ve added, click the trash can icon to the right of the rule.

The Robots.txt module now includes an Editor for Multisite Networks.  This Editor can be found in the Network Admin screen as shown below:

Robots.txt Editor in Network Admin

The Robots.txt Editor works in exactly the same way as the Robots.txt module.  However, any rules you enter here will take precedence and override rules added at the site level.  This means that Network Administrators can set global rules using the editor that will apply to ALL site in the multisite network.  It also means that Site Administrators cannot override these network level rules.

To add a rule:

  1. Enter the User Agent. Using * will apply the rule to all user agents
  2. Select the rule type to Allow or Block a robot
  3. Enter the directory path, for example /wp-content/plugins/
  4. Click the Add Rule button
  5. The rule will appear in the table and in the box that shows your robots.txt appears

Adding a Rule in the Robots.txt Editor

NOTE:  Whilst the robots.txt generated by All in One SEO Pack is a dynamically generated page and not a static text file on your server, care should be taken in creating a large robots.txt for two reasons -

  1. A large robots.txt indicates a potentially complex set of rules which could be hard to maintain; and
  2. Google has proposed a maximum file size of 512KB to alleviate strain on servers from long connection times.