Why is my Azure website no longer visible?

Question

I have created a new website and published it (via Visual Studio) to Azure. Initially, everything worked fine.

But, after republishing the website a few times, the website stopped responding - i.e. it shows a "Server not found" error in Firefox or "This page can't be displayed" in IE).

Now, any new website I publish shows the same error. (Here's a basic test site I published, so you can see the message: http://www.test-website.azurewebsites.net)

The previously published websites are still working; it is just new websites that are failing.

Does anyone know why this would be happening?

Additional Info:

The website was created using Visual Studio 2012 C# ASP MVC .NET 4.5

The websites are using Microsoft's 'Free' pricing tier.

There are a total of 3 websites on the Azure account.

that site loads fine without the `www`, which is not usually part of an azure url anyway. — Claies, Mar 27 '15 at 11:07
Yes! That is the problem. Thank you. (See my reply to Matthew Haugen for more details.) — Ulric, Mar 27 '15 at 11:25
Since you answered first, could you post this as an answer and I will mark it as the solution? — Ulric, Mar 27 '15 at 11:50

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 27 '15 at 11:14

Claies brought this up in a comment, and I'll take it a step further. Your link should not start with www. when you're visiting a .azurewebsites.net domain.

If you're just typing this, then that's the issue.

On the other hand, given that you're asking this, I'm wondering whether maybe your configuration file is a bit messed up in VS. When you run the publish wizard, try going back a couple pages to the page with the textboxes, and double-check that none of those refer to the www. version. If they do, simply drop that.

That settings shouldn't affect the publish itself, but it will determine which URL to go to when publishing completes, so you'll definitely want to get that fixed if it is wrong, or else this will just keep happening.

Yes, Claies' comment does identify the problem. But it is not due to the publishing profile settings; it is because of Firefox/IE. Firefox/IE insists on putting the www. in front of the URL. This can be bypassed in IE by putting a HTTP:// in front, but Firefox ignores that and puts the www. back in. If I open the website in Chrome, it displays fine. Unfortunately, I do not have enough reputation points yet to 'mark up' your reply. Sorry. :( — Ulric, Mar 27 '15 at 11:36

Why is my Azure website no longer visible?

1 Answers1