DotNetNuke homepage won't load, keeps redirecting

Alright, so I was setting up my new laptop this week and ran into a problem. It was a familiar problem, but I couldn't track it down. Forum posts didn't help, google didn't help (I kept finding my own damn blog as the number one result when searching) so I figured I would post the appropriate fix. That way when I search again and I find my own blog I will find the solution!

I've now seen this problem twice, once in Windows 2003, and now in Windows Vista.

DNN will install successfully, but after install I couldn't get the homepage to load. Trying it in Firefox results in the dreaded redirection detection that Firefox has.

I uninstalled DNN, tried a different version of the Source package, no luck same problem. Then I stumbled across the fix.

Medium trust! I was using the development.config file as the web.config file, the development.config file has the trust level set to Medium, changing this value to Full corrects the problem.

So, if you're having problems with your DNN instance redirecting indefinitely when you try to browse to the root, check your Trust settings in the web.config file.

Now that I have that figured out, I can start planning my day for tomorrow. I think I'll start out by visiting the Smithsonian Museum, though I need to figure out which one to start at. I am pretty sure I've only been to the  Air & Space museum, and while I would like to go there again, I feel like I must change it up! I can tell you one thing though, if I do go to the A&S museum I will be buying some astronaut ice cream like I did the first two times I went. I only have half the day or so before I need to head out ot Fedex Field and get registered for the ProSolo I'm racing in this weekend.

22 Comments

  • Aha! that explains everything :p I thought I was going crazy .. some installs would do that redirect loop and others wouldnt .. and it was because sometimes I used dev.config and sometimes I used release.config!

    Thanks Chris, much appreciated.

  • OK, but what if you're hosting server is running in medium trust?

  • I have the same problem, my hosting provider limits me to only a medium trust environment. Is there a way around this redirect loop for us?

  • I was also having the same problem and i uncommented in the web.config and now it's working for me....... Just give it a try .......

  • Hi, seems not to help for me. Any suggestions? I have child portals.

  • Sorry Chris,

    I have to take back what I said about your post explaining everything... because as other commenters have noted, DotNetNuke can and does work under medium trust.

    But your post did give me the clue that lead me to find the real cause of infinite redirect loops in DotNetNuke. Medium trust is just half the story, and there had to be something else involved.

    I was able to put the pieces together in my latest blog post "Fixing DotNetNuke infinite redirect loops" at http://www.bestwebsites.co.nz/dotnetnuke/solving-the-dotnetnuke-redirect-loop/

    JK.

  • Still no luck. Tried both Chris' and JK's solutions, to no avail.

    Anyone know how any other reasons this error might be encountered and fixed? This is extremely frustrating...

  • Hi,

    The problem is when your home page is not activated, DNN redirect to the portal alias address.

    Example:
    1. http://www.mysite.com/myalias
    2. redirect to http://www.mysite.com/default.aspx?alias=http://www.mysite.com/myalias
    3. try to redirect to not site home page but DNN find an page not activated then redirect to http://www.mysite.com/myalias

    Thus, if you activate the page, it works fine. This action is made in Default.aspx.vb in page init procedure.

  • We have similar kind of problem, The host pages and other secure pages goes into redirect loop.
    It only occurs when I enable SSL. To enable ssl, I have checked enable ssl and enforce ssl check boxes in site settings. we have both the secure and standard URL are same so I don't worry about other settings.
    Another thing that may cause the problem is my hosting environment. The web server is behind the loadbalancer with ssl terminator. SSL is installed on loadbalancer.
    When I access any image or other aspx page then dnn with https it's work fine.
    Please help to resolve this problem, your help would be highly appreciated. thanks in advance.

  • Thanks Chris

  • I tried Full trust and that did not solve it.

    Based on other blogs I tried switching System.Web.Extensions to 3.5, but switching blows up Engage Publish in a pretty nasty way. In my case it turned out that 1.6x of extensions wasn't the issue. Because I am in the middle of a migration I have a hybrid environment using Ektron cms400 for my home page. It runs as an index.aspx and does not use DNN. For the pages that use DNN I had setup the DNN home page in the page settings using LINK URL to redirect to www.vanguard.edu, my site root. In IIS I set index.aspx to be the first selected document over default.aspx. This worked like a charm until the 4.9.3. DNN upgrade.

    I still don't know why but apparently DNN intercepts every request including those going to my non-DNN index.aspx page and sends them to my default DNN home page which redirects to www.vanguard.edu. Infinite loop.

    The solution was to remove the Link URL for www.vanguard.edu. I'll just have to figure out another to make that page redirect properly or I'll have to migrate it asap.

  • Thanks this was causing me headaches as everyhinng in the portalalias was correct, works fine now, you should consider a job in DNN!

  • Lol thanks Terry, already got it

  • Hi, I'm using Visual Web Developer 2008 and SQL Server 2008 Express. I 'm on Win XP without IIS and I'm trying to use the localhost:3955 (the dynamic port assigned by VS) to run DNN. I have set the UsePortNumber key in web.config file to true i.e.

    Somehow I was able to install the DNN database but if I run the solution it just redirects me to the install page (Portal Alias set in the database). The default.aspx page doesn't come up! I tried setting the portal alias to the same page but of course it now goes into infinite redirect loop. PLEASE HELP!

  • Kapil, I would try removing the USE PORT setting in the web.config and just make sure your portal alias has the port defined in it.

  • I am having the same problem. I am trying to install this on ixwebhosting on a subdomain. The installation said it completed successfully but when I tried to view the site it just redirected to the install folder. (www.subdomain.domain.com/install). I did check the that "Use Port" and it was commented out. The version I'm trying to install the 5.0 version. Any other suggestions?
    Thanks!

  • I'm having the same issue on godaddy shared hosting. It kept redirecting to the /install folder (after successful completion of the install script) so I edited the portalalias table and changed it to www.mydomain.com/dnn but now it's doing an infinite loop.
    - switched System.Web.Extensions to 3.5 in web.config - didn't work
    - recycled my application pool - still nothing

    Any other suggestions other than hara kiri?

  • I've tried it all, but have had the redirect issue since I upgraded DNN in January of 2009:
    - Set trust to "Full"
    - Verified System.Web.Extensions is at version 3.5
    - Changed web.config to version 3.5
    - Asked my host (re-invent.com) to put AJAX in the GAC
    - Verified no trailing slashes in the alias for the portal
    - Recycled my application pool
    - Turned on "UsePort"

    Chris, if you can give me any help at all, I would appreciate it immensely. Please contact me at desi [at] clanrichards [dot] com - I'd love to hear from someone and actually get the portal working again...

  • I'm having the same issue. It works in localhost. But in production server, after removing the local IP address aliases, redirect loop issue appears. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

  • Thanks alot

  • I had the same problem. But it was a system on the network in the company that was blocking the site. Outside the company it works fine.

  • A few things I want to add to this. If you've tried all of the fixes above you might try looking at the markup either the skin file or the ascx the module is trying to load. While developing modules I've had malformed html and runat server controls cause this error. Just yesterday I had a line of javascript that was causing this, it was trying to assign a variable to the client id of a server side control like this: var x = '';. I was testing some stuff and came across this. My 2 cents.

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