I just tried putting some layout boxes into a template and got the following error page. I can no longer edit the page or navigate to it normally. I'm presenting with the following error screen every time.

Server Error in '/sitefinity4' Application.

---

Placeholders of adjacent controls do not match.

[InvalidDataException: Placeholders of adjacent controls do not match.]
   Telerik.Sitefinity.Modules.Pages.PageHelper.SortControls(IEnumerable`1 controlContainers, Int32 count) +670
   Telerik.Sitefinity.Modules.Pages.PageHelper.ProcessControls(IList`1 builders, IList`1 controlContainers) +69
   Telerik.Sitefinity.Modules.Pages.StaticPageData..ctor(PageData pageData, PageDataProvider provider) +272
   Telerik.Sitefinity.Web.PageRouteHandler.GetPageData(SiteMapNode node) +342
   Telerik.Sitefinity.Web.RouteHandler.GetHttpHandler(RequestContext requestContext) +75
   System.Web.Routing.UrlRoutingModule.PostResolveRequestCache(HttpContextBase context) +106
   Telerik.Sitefinity.Web.SitefinityHttpModuleIIS6.PostResolveRequestCache(HttpContextBase context) +402
   System.Web.Routing.UrlRoutingModule.OnApplicationPostResolveRequestCache(Object sender, EventArgs e) +80
   System.Web.SyncEventExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication.IExecutionStep.Execute() +68
   System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean& completedSynchronously) +75

Hi Chris,

The error is produced, because of mismatch of the controls/holders in the template and their parent ids. The error is thrown when the parent of one control/holder do not match correct child and docks cannot be arranged properly. We tried to reproduce this on a single template several times with no avail. Could you give us some steps( or send a screencast) that we could follow to replicate the issue here.

All the best,
Ivan Dimitrov
the Telerik team

Ivan,
Did you ever resolve this as I am now getting the same error?

Thanks,
Garry

Hi Chris,

We have not succeeded replicating the issue. There were other problems prior SP1, but they are fixed.

Greetings,
Ivan Dimitrov
the Telerik team

Ivan,
I am running on SP1 and how I ended up getting this error was by commenting out certain div/contentplaceholders because I was unable to select the search box on the template to set its search location. Once I commented out the sections that were overlapping they disappeared as I wanted, but when I uncommented them the controls in those sections no longer appeared and once I added a control back to the section I got this error.

Any idea on how I can clear this out or at least clear the DB so I can atleast resetup my template?

Thanks,
Garry 

My Template

Hi Chris,

Insight on how things work:

In Sitefinity, every widget remembers its previous widget. This is how widgets are rendered the same way you ordered them in the backend. The problem you describe happens when two consequent widgets have different placeholders. This should not happen and is handled by Sitefinity when you move widgets from the Page Editor. When you hid those sections, they stopped being handled by Sitefinity. When you uncommented them again, they are handled again and suddenly there is an error in the validation I mentioned.

What you can do:

You can write some code that will loop through the controls of the template which is broken and fix it. The widgets on the template are stored as TemplateControl objects. They have a Placeholder property which is the name of the placeholder of the control and a SiblingId property, which specifies the Id of the control before the current. You should be able to write some logic that will fix the problem, now that you know what it is. Here is the exact code that throws the exception:

You can also try to search through the database and edit controls manually. This is not very straightforward since the relations in the database are hard to follow. The tables you need to look at are:

sf_object_data - contains one row for each control. Each control knows the template/page it resides in.
sf_control_property - contains the properties for all controls. Each property knows the widget it is for.

You must look for SiblingId property. You can set all SiblingIds to Guid.Empty. This should make the page render without error but you will lose the ordering of the controls. You will have to reorder them manually.

I'm getting this now too.
The page was using a custom template but the nav bar was on the bottom of the page when it was published.
We made a new template bases on Left Sidebar.
After we changed the template the page started to throw this error.

UPDATE
Trying to open the template causes this error now too.
This is just like the Cyclic Child Error we got that forced us to totally recreate the entire project.

Hello Chris,

You should be able to fix the template with the 4.1 SP1 release. It will be out this week.