Google Sitemap.php Not Validating. How do I fix this?

Google tells me: "Your Sitemap appears to be an HTML page. Please use a...

[kennydubose]

I'm confused about how many sitemaps I need to submit to Google and what kind I need to submit.

In my webmaster tools I have the following sitemaps:

article_feed.xml
blog/atom.xml
googleSitemapArticles.php
googleSitemapCategories.php
googleSitemapProducts.php
googleSitemapTopics.php
sitemap.php

My problem is that all of the sitemaps have green checks by them except for the sitemap.php which has a large red x by it.

This worries me. When I click to see why this error message is there, I get the following message from Google:

Sitemap is HTML
Your Sitemap appears to be an HTML page. Please use a supported sitemap format instead.

My questions is two fold.

Is it important that the sitemap.php have a green arrow by it? If so, how do I create a valid sitemap.php file?

Also, is it enough to have the other sitemap files?

Thanks so much.

[bkeep]

When you go to the sitemap.php page is that a human readable page or is it setup per the Google sitemap requirements?

[Demaestro]

Check the mime-type of the doc, is it text/xml or text/html?

Another thing to check is how you start the doc.

Did you do something like this at the top?

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>

I bet is the mime-type. You can check this in FF by going
-> Tools -> Page Info -> General

It will be called "Type" and should have a value of text/xml

[kennydubose]

b keep. It is a human readable page.

Demaestro: here is what the doc says:

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />

<link href="stylesheet_new.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />

Thanks so much for the help

[bkeep]

It looks to me like you should remove the sitemap.php page from the list that Google reads as it is a sitemap for the end users to use, not to help the robots index your pages.

[kennydubose]

Is that why there is a red x in my webmaster tools for that page? Thanks so much for the help bkeep.