This is confusin me slghlty..

I have changed the downloads mod-rewrite from mysite.com/download.html
to
mysite.com/farcry-2-downloads.html to increase (hopefully) SEO later on in the sites life span.

Its all working okay, i changed the files
.htaccess
inc_modrewrite.php
rss.php
and now editing the file
sitemap.php

what i have found is that after editing sitemap.php the mysite.com/sitemap.xml updated itself as below to:

mysite.com/farcry-2-downloads_file_2_Farcry-2-Icons-Pack.html

the main link to the downloads page did not change though, it still linked as:

mysite.com/download.html

Is this some thing that will change when google re visits my site, or is it stored in the database ? or have i not edited a file correctly ? it seems a bit weird.. i bet i have missed some thing out !!

You'll lose all backlinks from google because he will receive 404 errors and delete them. In exchange he will acquire news links, but obviously this will need time, even more than 2 months. I suggest you to restore everything

The site has only been up for 3 weeks, so it is still new.
I have a m8 who reads a lot of seo books, and he advised me to change them for later down the line...

The only problem i have found is that the sitemap.xml wasn't referring to the newly changed links even though i edited
sitemap.php
rss.php with the new mod-rewrite links.

I can restore it back, but the only thing left to find it why it still referrers to download.html and not the newly named farcry-2-downloads.html

that's all m8, i appreciate your time and thoughts though

If your site is new than change the rewrite.

Anyway i don't understand the problem with links in the sitemap (lol)

Just because your friends or mate says something doesn't mean it's true. A lot of books mention things which are nonsense. In this case redoing the links is nonsense as memht is very SEO friendly.

each download you add will have it's own download page which would look like download-filename.html which to me is very SEO friendly, download.php?downloadsid=12 is not.

MemHT is one of the most (search engine) optimized CMS, just use the built-in modrewrite. Almost all users say that google loves it

Yes i agree that memht is by far the best seo friendly cms that i know of.

Im not trying cause an argument, but mearly enquiring why the sitemap.xml is still linking to download.html when i have changed all the references to read farcry-2downloads.html

My reason for doing this is simple...
people are going to search for "farcry 2 downloads" not "download" even a seo noob like me can see that it will have its benefits over time. and seen as this site is only 3 weeks old i am trying to improve seo now before it gets going.

Here is a screen shot of what i mean, as a picture paints a thousand words

Image resized (Original file: 794x354)

Have you cleared your cache ? this is a common mistake

Ive just looked at sitemap.php and i have a sneeky feeling it calls the main links from the _pagine db table, which would be why mem recomended reverting back

Idd like to keep it the way it is because i have not only reverted the downloads, but have also done news, forums and guide pages... but its not looking good..

Could you attach here your modified sitemap.php?