When starting up a Umbraco website on a fresh install of IIS, I sometimes get this error:
HTTP Error 500.19
There is not much more information, the error that says: The requested page cannot be accessed because the related configuration data for the page is invalid.
One can open the "Event Viewer" that might reveal more information, but many times there is no additional information to be found here either.
The first thing I check is the permission settings for the folders, after this one could just try to remove elements from web.config to figure out what inside web.config that is considered "invalid". Since I work a lot with Umbraco, MOST of the time the problem is the <rewrite>-element. Without the right components installed on server these elements will be unknown to IIS and considered invalid.
What do to?
Here are some thing to check if you get the HTTP Error 500.19 when trying to run Umbraco on a Windows IIS-server.
Ensure Permissions
Make sure that the IIS-user for the application pool (usually IIS_IUSRS) have full read/write access to the folders for the web-app.
Ensure DOTNET runtime
To run a modern ASP.NET (aka Core) application we need the "Hosting Bundle" to be installed on the server, it can be downloaded from the .NET website click on "All .NET X.0 downloads" and then download and install the "Hosting Bundle".
Ensure URL ReWrite
If you have the <rewrite>-element with <rules> configured in web.config make sure that you have installed "URL Rewrite":
- Download "URL Rewrite Module 2.1" from Microsofts website (scroll to the bottom of the page).
- Run the installer
- Restart IIS to be on the safe side.