Question

I have a client and he has reported that 5/6 times, the website has somehow returned to unpublished mode. We are unsure what could be causing it and generally it will happen when no one is working on the website at all. They do have some people who have in the past and may still have malicious intentions with regards to bringing the site down (so this could also be an issue).

1. Are there any known security issues in Umbraco whereby a user could malicious unpublished the entire website?

2. Are there any bugs in Umbraco that could cause this to happen?

3. Does Umbraco check the Database for published flag, or does it just check for the existence of the XML file before choosing to show the “there is more work to do” message?

Answer 1

Umbraco will show this page if it is unable to connect to the database.

In older versions of Umbraco, once this had happened the site would remain in this state until it was republished – this seems to have been fixed (I’m not sure from which version). If you are suffering from this and upgrading isn’t an option, then a workaround is to place the following code in the top of /config/splashes/noNodes.aspx:

<script runat="server">    
    protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        Server.ScriptTimeout = 100000;
        var cacheFile = IOHelper.MapPath("/App_Data/umbraco.config");
        try
        {
            var r = XmlReader.Create(cacheFile, new XmlReaderSettings() { DtdProcessing = DtdProcessing.Ignore });
            var d = new XmlDocument();
            d.Load(r);
            var n = d.SelectSingleNode("//root");
            r.Close();
            if (n.ChildNodes.Count == 0)
            {
                Response.Write("Republishing Site......");
                Response.Flush();
            }
            else
            {
                Response.Write("Site Was Already Published......");
                return;
            }
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            Response.Write(ex.Message);
            Response.Write("Cache missing, republishing.....");
            Response.Flush();
        }

        Document.RePublishAll();
        library.RefreshContent();

        Response.Write("Completed");
        Response.Flush();

        Response.Redirect("/");

        Response.End();
    }
</script>

(This code wasn’t originally mine – I can’t remember where I got it from). The code attempts to republish the site so that as soon as the database connection becomes available again the site comes back up.

You may also want to edit the content of /config/splashes/noNodes.aspx to show your users a site maintenance or error message which is more appropriate.

Are you aware of any planned database maintenance around the time your client’s site suffered from this? If not, you may need to take a look at their hosting.