Publish fails with 500 internal server error

Owned by Mattias Löfstrand
20 Apr 2021
1 min read

Problem

Publish fails and reports a response from Web Viewer that an internal server error has occurred (500)

Solution

Publishing process has generated the needed site and started to upload the files. At the end of the upload the web viewer will perform a set of tasks depending on configuration.

  • Attach database to SQL and reset caches (mandatory).

  • Regenerate site map (depending on configuration and from version 5.1 and later)

To find out the exact reason for this error check the web viewer log files.

First simple thing to test is to manually delete old SQL files from SQL Management Studio on web server and remove site.config from the target area on the web server and rerun publish.

Second thing to try is to check the access rights in SQL Management Studio.

Third thing is to verify that the IIS worker process has the proper rights to the target area on the disk on the web server. IIS should have full rights to the target area where the site is stored and to the files in the site.

If web server logs inducate problems with sitemap, go through configuration of site map generation. See this article: