Orchard – 404 errors

While developing a new custom module for Orchard and running the site locally I noticed that it wasn’t working any more:

• all the pages returned 404 error messages
• the home page displayed the directory listing

I assumed it was something wrong with my module so I started to search for the cause. I found some suggestions like:

• make sure you have a content page that has the homepage property set to true
• delete the cache file: Orchard.Web\App_Data\cache.dat
• check for duplicated route names
• check the log file under Orchard.Web\App_Data\Logs

And finally, the log file saved me, showing that there was a DB connection problem.

Note to myself: Always check the log file first if you have no idea what’s going wrong.