Community deployment errors

Overview

This document describes how to solve the problem related to the following error message that shows up when you log in the community after deploying using, for example, Ant Migration Tool. The error happens for other reasons as well but when found it, I solved in these ways that I will explain now.

Solutions

Solution 1: Wrong folder

Solution 2: Deploy all metadata files

Solution 1: Wrong folder

When we try to deploy the community, we have three elements:

• Network: mostly Community Management configuration elements (Reputation, Membership)
• CustomSite: domain and page setting information (indexPage, siteAdmin, URL)
• SiteDotCom: a binary file of your community layout, its the same file produced by the Export Site.com

For more information check this link.
When we pull the community metadata from our environment, there are downloaded in these folders:

If you check the file extension, we have the same one in the folder ‘CustomSite’ and ‘SiteDotCom’. Therefore, it is easy to make a mistake adding the file metadata in the wrong folder when we create a new branch. The deployment tool will have no problem to deploy the metadata but when we publish the community and try to log in, the above error will pop up. So YOU HAVE TO CHECK IF THE METADATA IS IN THE RIGHT FOLDER.

Solution 2: Deploy all metadata files

When you update a community page, you normally deploy only the ‘CustomSite’ metadata. However, you could sometimes find the above error because we might have updated the community tabs and we try deploy the community to other environment, the error appears. For that reason, ADD NETWORK METADATA AS WELL just in case.