Title: XML Validation Error
Last modified: August 20, 2016

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# XML Validation Error

 *  [csmicfool](https://wordpress.org/support/users/csmicfool/)
 * (@csmicfool)
 * [13 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/xml-validation-error/)
 * I am getting the following XML Validation error:
 * > error on line 2 at column 6: XML declaration allowed only at the start of the
   > document
 * The cause appears to be that there are 1 or 2 line breaks appearing before the
   XML declaration.
 * Any ideas how to prevent this from happening so that the XML is property validated
   by crawlers?
 * Thanks!
 * [http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-xml-sitemap/](http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-xml-sitemap/)

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)

 *  Thread Starter [csmicfool](https://wordpress.org/support/users/csmicfool/)
 * (@csmicfool)
 * [13 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/xml-validation-error/#post-3629853)
 * I just answered my own question.
 * Our designers had left some extra line breaks at the end of their functions.php
   file which got pre-pended on every page within the site.
 * Here is a good reference explaining the problem (for non-developers):
    [http://feedvalidator.org/docs/error/WPBlankLine.html](http://feedvalidator.org/docs/error/WPBlankLine.html)

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)

The topic ‘XML Validation Error’ is closed to new replies.

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 * 1 reply
 * 1 participant
 * Last reply from: [csmicfool](https://wordpress.org/support/users/csmicfool/)
 * Last activity: [13 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/xml-validation-error/#post-3629853)
 * Status: not resolved