Deployment - public site works fine, backend goes crazy

After deploying my site from my dev box to the test server, I can't edit anything in the backend.

Everything in the public-facing site (pages, images, etc) shows correctly. However, when I log in to the back end, every item I click on (pages, etc) throws an error

Could not deserialize service response, because it was empty or not valid JSON

Any suggestions? I'm developing on Win7 x64/IIS7, but deploying to Win2k3/IIS6.

**Update**

I examined the AJAX request in Fiddler. The server is responding with the public home page instead of hitting the web service. Still not sure what would cause that.

Hi David,

This is indeed strange. Can you provide error logs or trace logs for the error? Also can you tell us what steps were taken for the website deployment?

All the best,
Victor Velev
the Telerik team

Hi Victor,

I followed the steps at http://www.sitefinity.com/blogs/joshmorales/posts/11-02-23/installing_sitefinity_4_on_iis_6.aspx
(that is, the same steps I use to configure any new ASP.NET 4 app on IIS6).
I've noticed that if I hit the "help" method on one of the services, such as

~/Sitefinity/Services/Pages/PagesService.svc/help

I get the expected "help" class information page, so in that case the service is working correctly. Where should I look for the error log?

Hello David,

The logs can be found in App_Data/Sitefinity/Logs. Make sure to clean the folder before that. Also you can enable service tracer that will catch the actual error you are getting.

Greetings,
Victor Velev
the Telerik team

Victor,

There are no log entries that are relevant in the logs. Reloading the page doesn't add entries to the logs. For kicks, I went ahead and nuked the log files and nothing is showing there.

The problem persists on one server, though the app sort-of runs on a different server, so I'm reasonable confident that this is an IIS config issue. Still, the server in question is a clone of our production system so I have no doubt that the problem will pop up there, as well, if we decide to deploy Sitefinity.

Yay.

Hello Dave,

Please have a look at our article regarding IIS:

www.sitefinity.com/.../configuring-the-iis-to-host-sitefinity-projects.aspx

Can you try and replicate the issue on a new server or if you create brand new project on the same one?

Best wishes,
Victor Velev
the Telerik team

Hey guys,

Hello Jesse,

Dave can share more details with the community, however if you can share more details about your setup and environment, we would be able to help you resolve the issue.

Regards,
Victor Velev
the Telerik team

Hey Victor,

Hi Jesse,

I have answered you in the support ticket.

Kind regards,
Victor Velev
the Telerik team

Hi Jesse and Victor,
I never got this to work under IIS6, and I didn't have the problem on any of the IIS7/Win Server 2008 machines, so I eventually just wound up abandoning it.
Jesse, if you're still having this problem, I'd be interested to know if you were seeing the same thing that I was - ie, when I examined the request/response in Fiddler, I noticed that Sitefinity was returning the contents of the home page in response to all AJAX requests to the backend.

For those poor souls that end up down this path in the future and don't find a real solution.  Make sure the following is enabled in IIS (3.5 Features)...

Windows Communication Foundation HTTP Activation

www.sitefinity.com/.../configuring-the-iis-to-host-sitefinity-projects

Hi Paul,

Thank you for sharing your experience with the community.

Regards,
Nayden Gochev
Telerik