July 25, 2013

404 Error in ECM When Creating One Time Message

By: Craig Taylor
July 25, 2013

The Problem

ECM 404 Error
Recently, while working on a Sitecore site with ECM 2.1, I ran into an issue in a single environment where I was receiving a 404 error when trying to create a new "One Time Message."

All other environments (DEV, STAGE) were working with no issues.  The page being requested, (/emailcampaign/create/ad hoc messages) was there, just like in the other environments.

The Solution

After troubleshooting for a while, the problem was found in a patch include file for the SitemapXML module.  This module was only being used in Production and that is why the other environments were working.  The module updates the "encodeNameReplacements" node to replace spaces with dashes in an attempt to help with SEO.  This was intercepting the URL request from ECM, modifying it and this prevented Sitecore from finding the requested URL.  To correct this, I simply commented-out the offending configuration:

    <!--<encodeNameReplacements>
      <replace mode="on" find=" " replaceWith="-" />
    </encodeNameReplacements>-->

Watch out, those include files, they will get you.  Use the "admin/showconfig.aspx" page to really be sure what is being included without you realizing it.